Never Really Out
by Dramaqueen545
Summary: Lindsay Stark thought she was done with SHIELD, but when Coulson comes to her and informs her Barton's been compromised, she realizes she was never out of their grasp at all. Now she must return to a life she was trying to leave in order to stop an angry God from taking over the world and save a fellow agent in the process.
1. Chapter 1

**Hey everyone! So this is my first Avengers fanfiction, so reviews and constructive criticism are welcome. I, unfortunately, do not own the Avengers or anything else you recognize, those are owned by Marvel. I only own my OCs. Anywho, hope you all enjoy!**

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Coulson was tired.

It had been six hours since Loki had rained his assault on their base, and in those past hours Coulson had been busy trying to fix the large pile of trouble they now found themselves in, including the lose of one of their best agents. The lose of Barton was especially hard on him, considering the fact that he had been with him since the beginning of his career with SHIELD.

"Coulson." The sound of his boss's voice knocked Coulson out of his temporary state; he turned around and watched as Nick Fury walked into the makeshift headquarters they were forced to stay in until the hellicarrier was ready for them. Phil cleared his throat before walking a few feet toward the other man.

"Agent Romanov has been contacted, she is on her way to retrieve Doctor Banner."

"And Stark?" Fury asked quickly, his voice masked of all emotion. "Any word on him?"

"I'm on my way to New York to see him now." Fury nodded as he stopped at the computer screen in the middle of the room. Coulson took the silence coming from his boss as his cue to leave and collect the billionaire in New York, so he turned on his heels and began walking out of the room.

"We need to bring her in." Coulson stopped dead in his tracks upon hearing his boss's words, he didn't need Fury to clarify to know who he was referring to, only one person knew Clint almost as well as Natasha did. He slowly turned around so he was facing Fury again, whose eyes were dark and seemed to be asking for Coulson to argue with him.

"She won't be happy about this."

"We need every available agent to help bring Barton back," Fury explained as he pressed a few keys on the keyboard. "She's one of the best."

"She's also retired," Coulson responded quickly, earning him a glare from his superior.

"No one retires from SHIELD," Fury bit out before returning to typing in the computer. "Bring her back."

"After two years, she's not going to come back easily."

"You were her handler, correct?" Coulson merely nodded, his eyes still trained on Fury. "So handle her." He turned back to the computer and continued typing, not speaking another word to Colson, who simply sighed and made his way out of the room, trying to come up with a plan to get his old charge back to SHIELD in one piece.

It was almost impossible for Lindsay Stark to find time to herself anymore. Between juggling her eighteen credit course load of classes, flying from Omaha to New York every so often to deal with her father and help Pepper with a few things, and hang out with her friends, she was lucky she wasn't failing out of school yet. But, after some careful planning and last minute rearranging of her normally hectic schedule, she had done it. She had given herself just enough time to sit under a tree outside her dorm and relax in the crisp Nebraska air. The sounds of people walking around campus didn't affect her in the slightest, she just blocked them out as best she could and focused on the task at hand.

The light of the sun coated the notebook Lindsay had resting on her lap, accenting the detailed drawing she had been working on for the past few days. The half-drawn face of a man stared back at Lindsay as she made small marks with her pencil, etching in a small cut on the man's cheek, right above the stubble that covered his face.

"What are you doing here?" Lindsay asked calmly, her pencil never stopping its constant motion over the paper. Coulson removed his shades and slowly sat down next to the young girl, a small smile gracing his lips.

"Homework?" he asked, eyeing the thick red notebook the girl was filling with a small, detailed drawing. Lindsay shrugged slowly as continued shading the image.

"Just something to calm myself down; I had a Psychology test today." Coulson laughed and shook his head slowly.

"How does Tony Stark's only child become a shrink?" Lindsay paused her pencil for a moment and looked up at Coulson, her lips parted in a smile.

"What can I say; I'm good at analyzing people." As she calmly went back to drawing, Coulson looked over her for the first time since he arrived only moments before. This was not the young girl he remembered from the last time he had seen her. No, she was a woman now; her thick brown hair was longer than it had ever been, reaching down to her lower back before curling slightly. Her brown eyes were gleaming in the late autumn sunlight, as was the silver chain that wrapped several times around her neck.

"Are you going to continue staring at me," Lindsay asked, not looking up from the book, a small smirk working its way onto her face. "Or are you going to tell me why you came all the way out here to find me."

"It wasn't that far," Coulson said as he reached into his jacket pocket. Lindsay paused her pencil again, moved her eyes so she was looking at the older man, and raised one of her thin eyebrows.

"I go to school in Omaha." Coulson smirked as he continued to dig through his jacket pocket until he found what he was looking for. Pulling the object out, he set it on top of her notebook. Once Lindsay looked at it long enough to figure out what it was, her pencil slid down the page, marking areas she had not intended to mark. The small black symbol stood out against the white paper, making it impossible to miss the all-to-familiar logo of SHIELD.

"Fury sends his regards," Coulson said, trying to gage Lindsay's response to the band. She snorted and nudged the band off her book with the pencil's eraser.

"I can see that." She stared at the logo for several seconds before shaking her head. "I'm not doing it, Phil."

"Lindsay…"

"I'm happy here." She looked at him, her brown eyes a mixture of anger and fear. "I won't." Coulson stared at her for several long, tense moments before speaking.

"Barton's been compromised." Lindsay felt a mixture of emotions as Coulson's words sunk in. After a few moment of thought, she glared at the older man.

"Does Natasha know? Isn't _she_ his partner?" She stood up quickly and began putting her stuff into her brown leather bag. Coulson stared at the girl, trying to think of a way to keep her from leaving.

"Agent Romanov knows." Lindsay rolled her eyes as she finished putting everything in her bag, cringing a bit as she thought about the last time she had laid eyes on Natasha, or Clint for that matter. "But Fury wants you to help…"

"There is no way I am helping her do anything." Lindsay glared at Coulson, who was still sitting under the tree. "Hell, I won't even get in the same room as her if I can help it."

"You're being unreasonable," Coulson said as he stood. Lindsay gave him a look like he had just told her Fury moonlights as a drag queen. Lifting her bag onto her shoulder, she clenched her teeth and started turning in the direction of her dorm room.

"Goodbye Coulson." She was about ten feet away from him when he said something that made her stop.

"I see you still have your tattoo." Lindsay turned slowly and glared at him; he simply smiled at her. The small black design was mostly hidden by her black tank top, but Lindsay was guessing Coulson hadn't seen it, he was just assuming she hadn't gotten it removed. He would have been right. She sighed; Coulson slipped her sunglasses back on as he watched the girl's internal battle.

"I'll think about it." Coulson smiled and turned around to return to his car. Lindsay watched him go, wondering what the hell she had just gotten herself into.

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**As I said before, reviews and CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is welcomed. And when I say constructive, I mean tell me what I can do to make it better, or tell me what you like, please don't just review it and say it sucks. I've gotten those reviews before and they are not the most fun to read.  
Oh! And any ideas on who Lindsay was drawing? It is an actual person in the Marvel universe, someone from the movies, so anyone know who it could be?  
**


	2. Chapter 2

Sweat rolled off her face as Lindsay continued to punch and kick the giant bag that hung in the center of the room. She had dropped her book bag off in her room as soon as Coulson had left and drove herself to a small gym in the middle of Omaha. The gym was the first building off-campus she had been to when she first moved to Nebraska; a few local boys used it on the off-season to help bulk up for football. She was currently the only person in the building, which is how she normally liked it.

After ten more minutes of the intense assault she was raining down on the bag, she gasped for air and back away; the bag was swinging dangerously quickly back-and-forth.

"You hit that thing any harder and I'm going to have to hang it up again." Lindsay turned around at the sound of the voice, smiling once she located the source.

Alex Rivera smiled as he walked toward Lindsay, tugging on his jacket as he moved closer to the girl. His thick black hair was slicked back; the small scar over his left eyebrow standing out against his caramel-colored skin. Alex was the owner of the gym and had slowly become a friend of Lindsay's as she began frequenting the building more and more.

"That's sort of the point." Alex smirked at her as he made his way across the large room, finally stopping once he was about a foot in front of her.

"Don't you have a class today?" he asked as Lindsay turned around to wipe some sweat off her face. She simply shrugged, old t-shirt removing the liquid from her skin.

"Probably not going to go."

"Why not?" Lindsay turned her head and stared at Alex, one of her arms halfway through her black t-shirt.

"Don't really feel like going." Alex raised an eyebrow at the girl, a look of confusion evident on his face.

"Since when do you not want to go to your art class?"

"Since now," she said, wiping her forehead once again before putting the old shirt back into her gym bag. Alex leaned up against one of the walls and snorted.

"That's a lame excuse." Lindsay rolled her eyes and glared at him.

"Yeah well, it's the only one you're going to get." She pulled her brown hair into a ponytail and walked closer to Alex, who just kept on staring at her. "When do you leave for New York?" she asked curiously.

"Tomorrow. I need to be there before my parents' flight gets in."

"I think it's sweet that your parents are flying from Columbia to see you." Alex rolled his eyes and smirked at the woman across from him, who was smirking right back at him.

"Oh yeah, because flying to cold, wet New York is so much better than the trip I was planning on taking this summer to Columbia, where it is warm and sunny almost all the time." Lindsay laughed at the frustration clearly evident in his voice.

"Hey, I get it man, I don't like New York either." She turned around to grab her bag, before noticing Alex casually staring at her as she bent over. "Like what you see?"

"Yes," Alex muttered as Lindsay leaned up and closed the gap between them with a kiss, breathing in his smell. A mixture of cigar smoke and the cleaning supplies they used at the gym; it made her head spin.

The chords of Lindsay's favorite AC/DC song began playing from her pocket, causing Lindsay to groan.

"Ignore it," Alex stated before kissing her yet again. Lindsay hit the top button on her phone, effectively silencing the room, before wrapping her arms around his neck. They remained like that for several seconds before the chords returned.

"What does he want?" Lindsay groaned as she fished her phone out of her sweat-pants. Pressing the green button, she lifted the small device to her ear. "Make it quick, I'm busy."

"Did Coulson talk to you?" Tony Stark's voice resonated through the phone, making Lindsay roll her eyes.

"Why, did he talk to you?" She felt Alex staring at her, waiting for her to end the call.

"He just left the place." He paused for a second before finishing his statement. "With Pepper." Lindsay smirked at her father's voice.

"Did you call me to see if Pepper is cheating on you with Phil?"

"No!" Tony yelled, making Lindsay smirk more. "Besides, I doubt that man could ever get a woman."

"He was seeing that cellist." Alex coughed, making Lindsay turn toward him. He had his arms crossed over his chest and a smirk on his face. Lindsay mouthed the word 'sorry' and turned back to the phone-call. "I have to go Dad."

"Why? Have a hot date waiting for you to get off the phone?" Lindsay let out a laugh, the very sound echoing around the room.

"I am not going to discuss my sex-life with my father." There was a long pause on Tony's end of the phone; Lindsay swore she heard him drop something.

"You have a sex-life" Lindsay rolled her eyes and looked up at Alex, a smirk clearly evident on his face.

"Good bye Dad." After hanging up the phone, she slid it back into her pocket. Alex walked toward her, wrapping his arms around her waist and laughing quietly at her.

"Your daddy still thinks you're a virgin, huh?" Lindsay looked at him and glared, though her glare was sort of canceled out by the smile on her face.

"Shut up."

_"Why the hell would you want to go to school in Nebraska?" Tony questioned his daughter, who was sitting at the small table outside the extensive Malibu home, nursing a cup of coffee in her freshly manicured hands. She lifted the cup to her lips and took a small sip of the liquid before answering her father's rather loud question._

_ "Because, it's one of the best, scratch that, it's THE best college in the Midwest."_

_ "Stanford, one of THE best colleges in the whole COUNTRY has been after you for the past three years!" Lindsay rolled her eyes at how desperate her father was sounding right now, it almost sounded like Stanford was paying him for her attendance to the school._

_ "Tony, let her be," Pepper said from her spot opposite the young girl. She too had a cup of coffee in her hands though, while Lindsay's was splattered with cream and sugar, Pepper's was black._

_ "I'm not going to spend the next four years of my life with a bunch of Harvard rejects," Lindsay muttered, taking another sip of the warm liquid._

_ "You're a Harvard reject!" Tony shouted, slamming his hand down on the table, his actions causing the cups and plates to rattle. Lindsay, whose face was calm and almost void of emotion, turned and looked at her father in a way that almost seemed like he wasn't yelling at her._

_ "I can't be a reject if I didn't apply." The tone of the conversation seemed to take a nose-dive as Lindsay's words set in. Pepper placed her cup down on the table and stared at the young girl, her face now serious._

_ "Lindsay, you told us you sent in the application," she said. Lindsay took another sip of her coffee before shrugging her shoulders._

_ "That was just to get this one off my back about it," she explained, gesturing toward Tony, who was being eerily silent this whole time. Lindsay shifted her gaze over to him and had to hold back the laughter she really wanted to let out. Tony's face was so red it looked like he had stayed out in the California sun for hours and hours again, and his eyes looked like there was a fire lit behind them. _

_ "So, let me get this straight," Tony said, his voice coming out very rigid, almost as if he was trying to force himself from snapping at his daughter. "You didn't send in the application at all." Lindsay, very calmly and deliberately, lifted the mug to her lips and swallowed the last of her coffee, before setting the mug on the table and standing from her chair. She smirked slightly as she made her way toward the double doors leading to the house._

_ "I didn't even fill out the forms." With that, she quickly walked up the path and into the house, listening as Tony began yelling as Pepper tried her hardest to calm her boss down before he did something stupid. Without stopping to remove her shoes, she took the stairs two at a time until she reached the door leading to her bedroom, which she yanked open and slammed behind her._

_ The mid-morning sunlight streamed through the large window on the other side of the room, coating Lindsay and everything else in the room in a warm glow. The young girl sighed as she leaned against the door, closing her eyes and shaking her head as Tony's angry rant trickled through her half-opened window. _

_ "He'll get over it," she muttered after several seconds. Opening her eyes, she stopped leaning against the door and walked over to her desk, opening her laptop and checking her cell phone for any new messages or emails she may have missed._

_ "Ma'am," JARVIS's chipper voice sounded over her head, making her groan slightly as her attention was turned from the message she had just started reading. _

_ "Yes JARVIS?" she asked sarcastically, she knew the AI was going to continue talking weather she answered him or not. _

_ "Miss Potts wanted me to remind you that a car will be here in two hours to take you and your father to the airport for the __Apogee Awards." Lindsay let out a loud groan as she was reminded she had that today. _

_ "Oh great." She shut her laptop, harder than was probably recommended, and leaned back in her seat. After several seconds of silence, Lindsay pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed yet again. "JARVIS, is Dad still yelling?" The AI didn't speak for several seconds, until finally his British voice filled the room yet again._

_ "You're father is in his workshop, currently doing diagnostics on one of his sports cars," JARVIS explained quickly. Lindsay bit her lip and tried to think of a way to fix this, Tony ever ran diagnostics on his cars if he was mad or was trying to avoid something._

_ "I may have screwed up here JARVIS," she muttered as she placed her head in her hands. The AI didn't say anything, it was almost as if he hadn't heard her. After almost ten minutes of sitting with her head in her hands, Lindsay leaned up and rubbed her eyes. Slowly, almost in a way that seemed like she was afraid, she reached forward and opened the drawer in the desk. Random papers and pens scattered the area, hiding the area in question Lindsay was currently searching for. Running her fingers along the bottom, she smiled slightly as she removed the false bottom of the drawer and pulled out a small frame. It was covered in dust from being hidden from the light of day for so long, but Lindsay could still make out the smiling faces of both herself and Clint Barton, who was holding her in a fireman hold after a particularly difficult training session. The image made tears prick the corners of her eyes, causing her to quickly place it back in the her desk and return the false bottom, effectively removing it from view as if it didn't exist at all. Wiping away the tears, Lindsay put on a fake smile and stood from her chair, beginning her preparations for the awards, prepared to play the part of Lindsay Stark, golden child of billionaire philanthropist Tony Stark._

_ Her father would never understand her reasoning behind not staying in California for college, or any coast school in general, not that she would ever tell him the real reason. There was a reason she picked Nebraska, and it had nothing to do with the school she had chosen, though granted it was the best school in the mid-west. Oh no, her motives were much more selfish; she had chosen Nebraska because SHIELD didn't have a headquarters anywhere near that state. And that fact, in her mind, was greater than anything else a college could offer her._

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**Hope you guys liked this chapter!**


	3. Chapter 3

Lindsay awoke to the sound of Alex snoring quite loudly next to her in the bed. At some point, the two of them had moved from the gym to the small apartment Alex had for himself above the workout room, and then proceeded to move to Alex's bedroom. She turned over and untangled herself from Alex's strong arms before glancing at the bright light coming from the bedside table.

The clock on the table next to Lindsay read 3:43, causing her to groan.

"Why is this sleep schedule kicking in now?" She leaned up and placed her feet on the cold floor before lifting herself up off the bed. Alex shifted slightly from the lack of contact, but continued to sleep soundly, which made Lindsay smile. Walking around the apartment for several minutes, she managed to find a blanket to wrap around herself before moving onto the balcony.

The warm Nebraska air greeted her as soon as she stepped outside. Lindsay breathed in the humid air, looking up at the stars as she silently closed the door behind her. They twinkled above her head, sending a small smile to her lips as she crossed the wooden floor of the balcony and proceeded to lean on the railing.

The full moon draped Lindsay completely; her skin gleamed in the pale light it offered. The black sheet contrasted drastically against her skin, the sliver chain that hung around her neck stood out as well. Lindsay fingered the chain slowly and stared at it; it was a very simple chain, nothing complex or creative about it, and that's why Lindsay loved it so much. She sighed and closed her eyes.

"Clint, where are you?" The wind picked up a bit at that moment, it whipped around her, sending her long hair flying back toward the closed door behind her. She turned to look at the door, noticing she could see Alex's sleeping form in the bedroom through the glass of the windows. He looked so calm, so peaceful. Lindsay smiled looking at him, wondering if she ever looked that peaceful. She probably did, she just didn't feel all that calm right now. Images of Clint in danger kept flashing through her head, and the fact that she didn't know exactly what was happening to him was just stressing her out even more.

After spending a few more moments on the balcony, Lindsay sighed and shook her head. "I can't believe I'm doing this." She walked back into the apartment and fished her phone out of her discarded jacket. Sighing once more, wondering if it was too late to change her mind, she pressed the speed dial button for the number she wanted, a number that she should have erased from her phone a long time ago.

The person on the other end picked up on the first ring and part of Lindsay wanted to hang up upon hearing the voice.

"It's me," she answered quietly, not wanting to wake Alex who was still asleep in the next room. She sighed, rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, and turned her attention back toward the phone pressed against her ear. "Say I wanted to help you out… What would that entail exactly?" Coulson laughed on the other end of the phone, making Lindsay clench her teeth.

"A jet will pick you up at 8:00 tomorrow."

"Pick me up where?" Lindsay asked almost automatically, then winced at how normal it felt for her to ask that of Coulson.

"There's a file in your dorm with the address." Lindsay thought about asking how he got into her building, but she knew better than to ask the agent something as trivial as how he got into a locked room.

"Wait, I never said I would do it!" Lindsay said upon hearing Coulson's words.

"If you weren't going to do it, you wouldn't have called." Before Lindsay had the chance to argue, the line went dead.

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**Sorry this chapter was so short. Hope you guys are enjoying this story so far, reviews would be ****appreciated!  
**


	4. Chapter 4

Steve Rogers missed flying. It was the only thing he could relate to in this new world he found himself living in. So when he arrived at the address Fury left in his debriefing file and saw a black jet waiting for him, he was anything if not pleased.

"Captain Rodgers," a voice said, knocking him out of his thoughts. He looked away from the window of the jet, which had taken off about two hours earlier, and turned his attention to the source that spoke his name. The man who had accompanied him onto the plane, he was pretty sure his name was Phil, sat across from him. It was at that moment that Steve noticed the plane was no longer moving.

"Are we there?" Steve asked, leaning to look out one of the windows behind him. A field of corn covered the land that wasn't covered in the concrete of the tar-mat. The outline of buildings was visible over the corn, but those seemed several miles away from where they were currently. Steve raised one of his blond eyebrows after taking in the landscape. "This isn't exactly what I was expecting."

"It's just a pit stop," Coulson, who was now standing, said. He walked over to the small door on the plane and opened it slowly. "We just need to pick something up." Steve watched as Phil walked out of the plane and into the sunlight. He was gone for several minutes, during which time Steve heard him talking to someone whose voice he couldn't make out. Steve stood and was about to go see what was going on when Coulson walked back onto the plane, a black bag hung over his shoulder. He smiled at the younger looking man as he made his way further into the plane.

"Did we just stop to pick up a bag, Sir?"

"Not exactly." Suddenly, after seeing sudden movement behind the other man, Steve turned his head.

A young woman, dressed in a pair of black leggings and a bright green shirt, made her way up the steps behind Coulson. She had long brown hair that was tied up into a ponytail with bangs framing her pale face. Bright brown eyes stared back at Steve over Coulson's shoulder, a smile gracing her lips. Something about this woman made Steve feel almost normal again, less like the man out of time and more like the Steve Rodgers he was before the war, but he couldn't pin-point exactly what it was about her.

"Captain Steve Rogers, meet Agent Lindsay Stark." Steve's eyebrows shot up. Agent? This girl couldn't have been more than seventeen years old.

"Captain," Lindsay said, nodding toward the older man as she walked behind Coulson, making her way further down the plane's aisle. Steve nodded back to her.

"Stark? As in Howard Stark?" Lindsay smirked as she sat down a few seats away from Steve.

"Ah, so you met dear-old Grandpa, huh?" Steve nodded slowly as he sat down in his seat.

"Agent Stark, aren't you forgetting something?" Coulson asked, eyeing the teen from his spot across from her. Lindsay stared at him for several tense seconds before she sighed and reached for the waistband of her pants. A small black hand held gun came into Steve's view, causing him to jump out of his chair. Lindsay stared at him as she handed the gun to Coulson.

"It's empty," she explained. Steve stared at her for a few seconds before slowly sitting back down. Coulson, now holding two separate parts of the gun she had just handed him, looked up at the young woman with a semi-serious expression on his face.

"We're going to pretend I didn't see this." Lindsay rolled her eyes at her handler and threw her hands into the air.

"Well, it's not like S.H.I.E.L.D was going to give me one." Upon seeing Steve's confused look, Lindsay sighed. "It's unregistered."

"It's what?" Lindsay stared at him for several seconds before she turned back to Coulson.

"This is the guy you wouldn't shut up about?" Coulson didn't say anything; he just sat back and closed his eyes as the plane returned to the air.

After twenty minutes in the air, Phil and Steve stood and walked around the plane, Lindsay had fallen asleep several minutes before. Coulson had been spending the past few minutes explaining things to Steve, who was still confused about the current situation.

"So this Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?" Steve asked slowly. Coulson nodded.

"A lot of people were. You were the world's first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula."

"Didn't really go his way, did it?" Steve asked, causing Coulson to chuckle.

"Not so much. When he's not that thing though, guy's like a Stephen Hawking." Steve turned his head to stare at the older man, one of his blond eyebrows raised in confusion. "He's like a smart person." Steve nodded and looked back out one of the windows of the plane. "I gotta say, it's an honor to meet you, officially. I sort of met you, I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping." Coulson, upon realizing how creepy that sounded, stopped talking and shook his head. "I mean, I was... I was present while you were unconscious from the ice." Coulson stood silent for a few seconds before trying once again to speak to his hero. "You know, it's really, it's just a... just a huge honor to have you on board."

"Well, I hope I'm the man for the job."

"Oh you are!" Coulson said enthusiastically, then realized he once again sounded crazy. "Uh... we've made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input," Coulson explain, sounded incredibly proud. Steve turned to look at Coulson, one eyebrow raised.

"The uniform? Aren't the stars and stripes a little... old-fashioned?" Coulson smiled at the man, a slight twinkle in his eyes.

"With everything that's happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old-fashioned." Steve nodded before turning to look at Lindsay. The young girl looked so peaceful as she rested, the wary look she had when she entered the plane was gone.

"Why is Miss Stark here, Sir?" Coulson turned around to look at his young charge, a small smile on his lips as she shifted slightly in her sleep.

"Same reason you're here Captain." He looked at Steve, who looked back slightly confused. "She's here to help."

"But she's so young, Sir," Steve said quickly, his eyes glued to Lindsay's sleeping form.

"Not really," Coulson muttered, then shook his head. "Despite her age, Miss Stark is one of the best agents this organizations has to offer the world." Steve opened his mouth to ask another question, when the pilot turned around and said something to Coulson. "You might want to take your seat, we're almost there." Steve didn't say anything; he just looked between Coulson and Lindsay, who were slowly beginning to wake up, before he made his way back to the seat he previously resided in.


	5. Chapter 5

_2008_

_ "We have an assignment for you." With fingers still held firm on his bow, Barton turned and stared at the man before him, moving his eyes from his face to the black tablet in his hands._

_ "You need me to make someone disappear?" he asked, his gaze moving back to the target he had set up down the range. He had been shooting for close to two hours with a perfect record for accuracy._

_ "Need you to bring someone in."_

_ "Who?" Barton questioned, taking a deep breath in preparation to let his arrow fly, Coulson watched the young man pull back the string of his bow and aim at the center of the target placed one hundred yards away. Just as Barton was about the release his grip on the string, Coulson spoke._

_ "Lindsay Stark." Barton flinched upon hearing the name of his target, causing his arrow to fly wide and lodge itself in the wall instead of its intended target. He whipped around to glare at his handler, who was smirking back at him._

_ "You're sending me after a spoiled rich girl?" Barton snapped as images of Tony Stark's only child flashed through his mind. Everyone in the world knew about Tony Stark, the millionaire CEO of the largest weapon's manufacturer in the world, who was just as famous for his partying as he was for his weapons. And, with how famous Tony was, his daughter was even more so._

_ Lindsay Maria Stark was one of the most famous women in world culture to date, for both good reasons and bad. For the past few years, she had been the face for the Maria Stark Foundation, an organization started by her father in his mother's memory that helped underprivileged children around the world. Clint could vaguely remember seeing a news story about her opening a school for girls in Iran, despite critics in the US and threats from citizens of Iran._

_ But for all the good things she was known for, there were more infamous reasons her name was a household one as well. She graduated high school at the age of sixteen, but instead of going straight off to an Ivy League university as her father had, the girl decided she wanted to take some time off and travel. The details are sketchy at best about what happened, but after six months out of school, Lindsay turned from a quiet, kind child to one of the wildest party animals in American sub-culture. Her parties were that of legend, or so the American public seemed to think. As far as Barton was concerned, Lindsay Stark was a spoiled daddy's girl who needed to be told no a few times._

_ "Sir," Clint remarked, moving his bow down to his side before turning back to look at Coulson. "With all do respect, I think Ward could take this one." He began walking past Coulson when the older man turned and walked behind him, tablet still in his hands._

_ "That's what we thought, which is why we sent him last week." Barton's step faltered, he turned around and glanced at Coulson, who was smirking slightly._

_ "Grant couldn't capture a seventeen year old?" he barked out, trying to fight the urge to laugh. _

_ "I think you'll find that Miss Stark is more than just a normal seventeen year old." Coulson handed the tablet to Barton, a video already playing on the screen. _

_ The video was clearly taken from a corner surveillance camera, the quality of the images were grainy and dark. The location seemed to be an alleyway, with its countless trashcans and bags of garbage lining a plain brick wall, though there was no way to tell where this alleyway was. Barton could clearly make out the outline of Ward on the screen; after all he was the only other person in the video apart from the small, petite brunette wearing a silver dress and heels. The girl in question matched the other images he'd seen of Lindsay Stark, the same brown eyes and thick brown curls; he still couldn't figure out why SHIELD wanted her so badly though. _

_ Ward walked up to Lindsay and began speaking to her, though the video didn't have audio so Clint couldn't tell what he was saying. Whatever he did say, though, seemed to make Lindsay laugh. She smiled at Ward before trying to walk past him, when he grabbed her upper arm in a tight grip. It would appear to any normal person that Ward, who was much bigger than Lindsay, had won and was going to apprehend the girl, but Clint had knowledge that that was not the case, and was waiting for something to happen. And something happened all right. Before Barton had time to blink, Lindsay's foot had connected with Ward's shin, sending him stumbling back a few steps. Any normal teenage girl would have turned and ran after an altercation like this, but Lindsay simply stood there as Ward recovered, and when he tried to grab her again, she kicked him in the stomach, causing him to double over in pain._

_ Clint watched the video-feed in amazement, he couldn't believe a seventeen-year-old girl was completely destroying a fully trained SHIELD agent. The grainy image showed Lindsay's fist connect with Ward's nose, which began gushing blood as soon as contact was made._

_ "When was this filmed?" Clint asked as video-Lindsay flipped away from Ward's way-ward fist, though it did manage to connect with her mouth momentarily._

_ "Two days ago near Miami." Clint glanced up at Phil, who just shrugged and smirked. "Something about it being Spring Break." Clint shook his head and resumed watching the on-screen fight, which now involved Lindsay flipping Ward onto his back and kicking him in the head, knocking him out. Without so much as a second glance at her unconscious opponent, Lindsay stood up straight, wiped the blood away from her split lip, and walked out of the frame._

_ "Where is she now?" Barton asked, handing the device back to Coulson._

_ "Back in Malibu," Phil explained quickly, putting the tablet under his arm. "Mr. Stark is out of the country for the rest of the week, so she's there alone." Clint nodded and began walking toward his room, bow in hand. "Barton." The man in question turned around and eyed his handler, who was staring back at him rather intently. "Bring her back in one piece." Barton nodded and left the room, mentally planning how he was going to end up like Ward and give Lindsay a very one-sided fight._


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Lindsay had woken up from her nap, they were landing at their 'location' (Coulson wouldn't tell her exactly where they were going, he just said she would feel 'right at home', which didn't exactly do anything to calm her growing nerves.) As soon as the plane hit the ground, Lindsay was out of her seat and trying to find a way off the plane.

"Ma'am?" Lindsay jump at the feeling of a hand on her shoulder, she turned around to see Steve staring at her. "Everything ok?" It took her several seconds to slow her racing heart before she could answer him.

"Yes," she said, swallowing hard in hopes of getting the lump in her throat to go away. "I'm fine Captain."

"Not a fan of flying?" Steve asked slowly. Lindsay attempted to smile at the blond man ahead of her, but her eyes were glued to the hanger door, willing it to open.

"Not partially."

"Agent Stark prefers to spend her time firmly on the ground," Coulson said, making his way behind the pair. Lindsay turned to him and was about to say something when the sound of doors opening graced her ears.

"Thank you God," she whispered as the doors opened all the way.

Bright mid-morning sunlight streamed through the open doors as Lindsay quickly made her way out of the jet. Loud noises assaulted her ears, but this wasn't something she was unused to.

"Agent Stark?" Lindsay looked up at the sound of her name, which she barely heard, then immediately regretted her choice to do so. Less than ten feet away, staring at her as if she was a ghost, was none other than Natasha Romanov, the very woman she did NOT want to see. Lindsay felt her shoulders tense up just from looking at the woman, if they weren't on an aircraft carrier in the middle of a large body of water, she probably would have jumped off just to get away from her by now.

"Agent Romanov," Lindsay muttered, meeting the woman's gaze.

"Nice to see you again." Lindsay was thankful for the loud noises, because they blocked the snort she did at Natasha's last comment. Neither of them was happy to see the other; Lindsay didn't feel the need to lie and say she was, so she simply nodded.

"Agent Romanov," Coulson greeted, walking up behind the young girl. After introducing Steve to the red-haired agent, he explained he was needed on the bridge.  
"I'll go with you!" Lindsay exclaimed, eager for a way to get clear of the other female agent. Coulson just smirked at her before the two made their way to their desired location. They crossed the concrete medium, passing several planes along their way. Once they were out of the crisp air and into a long hallway, Lindsay took a deep breath and leaned against one of the nearby walls.

"Everything ok?" Coulson asked. Lindsay looked up at him and glared at his subtle smirk.

"You didn't tell me _she_ would be here," she growled, her voice taking on an icy tone that made Coulson frown.

"Why wouldn't she be?" he asked, his voice calm and collected. "She's Agent Barton's…"

"Partner, I know," Lindsay bit out, standing up straighter. She glared at the older man before making her way down the hallway, passing Coulson in her wake.

"Where do you think you're going?" Lindsay turned around and sneered at the man before her, her eyes colder than they were before Natasha had been mentioned. Phil knew the older woman was a sore subject as far as Lindsay was concerned, given everything that had happened between the pair and Barton, but for this mission to be successful, he needed to get the teenager to stop acting like Lindsay Stark and start acting like the SHIELD agent she once was.

"To the bridge. I may have been gone for almost three years but I can still find my way around a hellicarrier." Coulson rolled his eyes at her as she continued walking down the hall, constantly passing people with every step she took.

"No, of course you can," he muttered, making his way behind the teenager to make sure she didn't end up getting herself lost. Then again, that wouldn't be the first time.


	7. Chapter 7

**Hey guys! I know these last two chapters have been a bit on the short side, but I promise they get longer from here on out, I just started my first year of college and am still working on the whole "Writing vs homework" schedule, but I think I have a system in place so they should get longer! **

**Also, thanks to everyone whose favorited, followed, and reviewed this story. It makes me happy to know people actually read and enjoy this story!**

**Hope you guys enjoy!**

* * *

_ The sound of bass heavy music could be heard miles before Clint even reached The Star, a high-profile club outside of Malibu. SHIELD's intel informed him that Lindsay had been seen earlier inside the building, which was the only reason he was there now._

_ Once his car was parked a few miles away, Barton walked up a rather large hill that lead to the modern looking building, dodging past a large line of people waiting in turn to her into the club, many of the females in lone dressed in outfits that left very little to the imagination._

_ "Name?" Clint paused in front of a large, muscular man dressed in all black. This man was built like a linebacker, with muscles the size of bowling balls and a scowl that seemed to be permanently etched on his face._

_ "James Cross," he stated, giving the name he was using for this assignment. The bouncer looked over the list in his hand for several seconds before shifting his gaze back to Clint, aka James._

_ "Sorry, buddy," the man said, his voice gruff, but loud enough for Clint to hear over the music that was trickling out of the building. "You're not on the list."_

_ "Are you sure?" Clint asked, slipping one hand into the pocket of his black pants. "Maybe you should check again." The bouncer looked at Clint and opened his mouth to tell him to get lost, when he noticed the man before him was slipping something across the clipboard. Grabbing it quickly from his grasp, the bouncer eyed the object in his hand for a few seconds before letting out a loud, low laugh._

_ "Are you seriously trying to bribe your way into the most popular club in California with only one hundred dollars?" the bouncer questioned, his laughter continued to sound. Clint sighed silently and opened his mouth to argue with the man when some commotion from the crowd behind him distracted the pair._

_ "Lindsay!" The crowd began cheering and shouting the teenager's name, causing Clint to turn around. Sure enough, no less than fifty feet away from him, was his target. Dressed in a short red dress and heels, her short hair curled gently around her shoulders, accenting her red lipstick she had on (Clint bet it was to hide the fact that they were split). She smiled and waved at every person out there, her brown eyes glowing with warmth that radiated in the dim light._

_ "Miss Stark!" Both Clint and Lindsay turned toward the sound. A tall man dressed in a suit stood about twenty feel away next to a large black Sedan. Clint recognized the man as Happy Hogan, chauffer and bodyguard to the Stark family. Lindsay smiled at the man and, after sating goodbye to the few people she was with, walked over to the car. The pair exchanged some words that were too quiet for Clint to hear, then Lindsay quickly got in the back seat of the Sedan. After another minute, the car started pulling away, driving back down the hill. Clint watched it go, mentally taking in the license plate as he walked back down the hill to his car, forgetting all about the bouncer who had pocketed his forgotten bribe. _


	8. Chapter 8

"See, I told you I knew where I was going!" Lindsay smirked triumphantly as the large metal door opened, revealing the room she had been looking for the past ten minutes. Coulson followed behind her as they made their way into the room, smirking at her behind her back.

"Yes, it just took you eight minutes longer than it should have," he muttered. Lindsay slowed down and looked at him over her shoulder, glaring at him slightly.

"You could have said something." Coulson smiled and shook his head calmly.

"Now why would I do that when you _knew_ where you were going?" Lindsay opened her mouth to make a snarky comment when the doors opened behind them.

"Agent Stark." Lindsay turned away from Coulson toward the voice, training her eyes on a familiar form.

"Maria Hill, as I live and breath." The older woman, who looked just the same as when Lindsay left, was dressed in her signature black jumpsuit with her hair pilled up on top of her head in a tight bun.

"You're looking well," Maria smiled as she walked further into the room with a tablet in hand. Lindsay smiled back at her, beginning to feel much more comfortable in the location she was in.

"College has been good to me." She looked between Coulson and Hill before smirking slightly. "I've learned I have a tolerance for large quantities of alcohol."

"I'm pretty sure we knew that already," Maria said, smirking at the younger woman. Lindsay opened her mouth to argue with her, but then closed it slowly before shrugging.

"Touché." The three of them chuckled; Lindsay was beginning to feel much calmer with every minute she spent here. This part of her old life was easy, if it was all this then she probably would not have left at all…

"Agent Stark!" Unfortunately, it was not all like that. Lindsay immediately tensed up hearing her name spoken by a very familiar voice. She slowly turned around until her eyes landed on the form of Nick Fury. Even after two years of not seeing him, in Lindsay's eyes, Fury still made the nineteen year old feel as though she was three feet tall. "Good to see you again." Lindsay cleared her throat and smirked slightly, trying to hide exactly how uncomfortable she felt.

"Nick," she said calmly, walking around the room the four of them resided in. "I love what you've done with the place." Fury didn't respond right away, just watched her out of the corner of his eye as she continued to walk around the room. "It's very…" She paused her motions and turned her gaze back to the older man. "Homey." Fury stared at her for a few seconds before chuckling.

"Oh Lindsay," Fury said calmly, though the fact that he used her first name made the younger woman's skin crawl. "It's good to see college life hasn't dampened your sense of humor." Lindsay felt like Fury was egging her on, as if he was trying to get a response out of her. She wanted to give him a response, oh boy did she want to, and she opened her mouth with a comeback on the tip of her tongue, when Coulson placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her from speaking.

"Doctor Banner and Captain Rodgers are on the deck with Agent Romanov," he explained, his hand still on Lindsay's shoulder, meaning he felt her tense up at the mention of the redhead. "She's bringing them in now." Fury nodded before turning back to state something to Agent Hill.

"Take her up." Lindsay's lungs felt like they were going to explode in her chest as Fury's words registered in her head; she whipped around and stared at the older man with wide eyes and a set jaw.

"Take what up?" she bit out. Fury smirked at her as the people around them busied themselves with various tasks.

"You're not still afraid of heights, are you?" Lindsay's heart seemed to stop beating as terror took a hold of her. She opened her mouth to scream at the older man when she felt a slight jerk. Turning her head, she looked out the large glass windows and immediately tensed up as she noticed clouds covering more and more of her line of sight.

"You bastard," she bit out, quickly turning her gaze away from the window. The assent so far was so smooth that, if she didn't look out the windows, she wouldn't have realized they were no longer on the water. Fury smirked at her slightly before turning his attention toward Steve and another man who had just walked into the room. The man Lindsay didn't recognize was dressed in a pair of brown dress pants with a matching jacket and a purple shirt tucked neatly underneath. His brown hair was curling slightly around his ears, and his brown eyes were gleaming slightly behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

"Doctor Banner," Fury stated, reaching out to shake the man in question's hand. "Thank you for coming." Banner smiled, but even from her position several feet away, Lindsay could tell he was somewhat on edge with the whole situation.

"Thanks for asking nicely. So, uh... how long am I staying?" Banner asked, eyeing Fury cautiously.

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear," Fury explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Lindsay rolled her eyes at the comment, which Fury didn't see but Banner did, which in turn made him smirk.

"Where are you with that?" Bruce asked, walking away from Fury and toward Lindsay, who was standing right next to one of the large computers. Fury looked at Coulson, who was still standing behind Lindsay as if he was worried she would turn and dart out the room.

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us," Phil explained, sounding very scientific. Lindsay listened to him and felt like it was going in one ear and out the other. She did realize one thing very important in his explanation.

"That's still not gonna find them in time," she muttered, just loud enough for Banner and Coulson to hear. Both casted a look at her, Coulson's more full of pity than Banner's was.

"You have to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Banner asked, turning his attention back over to Fury.

"How many are there?" Fury asked, completely serious. Once again, Lindsay rolled her eyes.

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places." He glanced around the room for a few moments before speaking again. "Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"I can take him," Lindsay said, shifting slightly so she could walk over toward Banner when Fury held up his hand.

"Agent Romanoff, would you show Dr. Banner to his laboratory, please." Lindsay stumbled, her eyes landing on the red haired agent who was standing by the door; Lindsay hadn't even noticed the other woman was in there. Banner looked between Lindsay and Natasha before slowly making his way toward the older woman.

"You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys." The two of them made their way out of the room; as soon as the door closed, Lindsay turned on Fury.

"Why exactly couldn't I take him?" she asked, her voice full of annoyance.

"I thought you might want to settle in, seeing as you'll be here awhile." In that moment, something inside Lindsay snapped.

"Listen here Blinky," she bit out, glaring at the older man before her. "I'm not here to be you're slave again. I'm here for Barton." She turned to leave and made it almost to the door before she turned around the glare at Fury again. "Nothing has changed with you, has it?" He didn't answer, not that Lindsay expected him to. She quickly turned and made her way out of the room, barely noticing that Coulson was following closely behind her.


	9. Chapter 9

_ "Did you really have to go out tonight?" Happy asked, following behind Lindsay as she entered the large Malibu estate. The clicking of her stilettos on the marble floor echoed in the foyer with every step._

_ "We've been over this before Happy," Lindsay stated as she pulled several pins out of her hair, sending curls cascading lower on her neck. "You didn't have to come get me." The pair walked through the foyer, the living room, until finally stopping in the kitchen. Lindsay, still adorned in her red dress and heels, walked over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of diet soda._

_ "If I didn't come," Happy began, crossing his arms over his chest and watching the teenager reach into a cabinet to get a glass. "How exactly would you have gotten home?"_

_ "Well," she grunted, pulling the crystal glass off the shelf. "It's not like I had any trouble getting there without you." Happy just glared at her, mostly because she was right. "Look." Lindsay sat herself on the counter and stared at Happy, a small smile on her face. "Would it make you feel better if I promise to stay in the house for the rest of the night?"_

_ "Can I believe that?" Happy asked, raising one of his eyebrows at the girl in question. Lindsay rolled her eyes as she poured herself a glass of soda._

_ "JARVIS will make sure I don't." She looked up at the ceiling, almost as if the AI were just above her. "Right buddy?"_

_ "I will be Miss Stark's personal babysitter, Mr. Hogan," JARVIS explained, his British accent ringing through the room. Lindsay smiled at Happy, a look of victory plastered across her face._

_ "There you go!" Happy opened his mouth to argue with her when JARVIS spoke again._

_ "Ma'am, Mr. Stane is on the line for you." Lindsay sighed and took a sip of the dark, tangy liquid._

_ "What does he want?" she muttered, shaking her head. She looked up at Happy, who was still staring at her, internal battle evident behind his eyes. "Go home Happy," Lindsay commanded, her voice light and airy. "I'll be fine." Happy stared at her for a few seconds, almost as if he were afraid to leave her alone. "Go!" Finally, Happy let out a small smile and turned around, leaving the teenager sitting on the counter by herself. "Finally," Lindsay let out breathlessly. She turned around and opened the largest cabinet, the dozen or so bottles twinkling in the florescent light. "Come to Momma." Reaching up, she wrapped her red-clade fingernails around the neck of the largest bottle, eyeing the Rum with a grin._

_ "Ma'am," JARVIS spoke again as Lindsay, bottle and glass in hand, jumped off the counter and landed softly on the marble floor, teetering only slightly on her thin heels. "Mr. Stane?" While letting out a groan, Lindsay set the items on the counter and quickly hit the flashing green button on her phone._

_ "Why are you calling me?" Lindsay asked casually as she lifted the already open bottle of Rum in one hand and held it over the glass._

_ "Nice talking to you too." Obadiah Stane's voice echoed through the room, the sound making Lindsay pause her pouring momentarily. Obadiah had been a presence in her life for as long as she could remember, always being the serious mentor-figure Tony needed. Lindsay rolled her eyes and continued pouring the liquor._

_ "Oh, I'm so sorry, where are my manners?" she asked sarcastically, her voice sickly sweet. "How are you Obie?" The older man laughed, the thick yet slightly cold sound filling the air around her._

_ "Have you heard from Tony?" Lindsay set the Rum bottle down and took a sip of her drink, savoring the slight burn it caused in the back of her throat._

_ "Not since he left a few days ago." Tony and his new assistant Pepper Pots had traveled to China three days previous so Tony could schmooze some big tech-company's CEO into selling out and weren't due home for another four days. "Why?"_

_ "He hasn't gotten back to me all day, or the past several days," Obie explained as Lindsay took another sip._

_ "And you thought calling his daughter up at…" She paused, turning around to glance at the flashing clock behind her. "2:00a.m. on a Thursday morning was the best way to remedy this situation?" Lindsay picked up her cell and turned off the speakerphone, lifting the small object to her ear. With her phone in one hand and half-full drink in another, she began making her way out of the kitchen and up the nearby staircase leading to her room. "What if I was asleep?" Obadiah laughed again just as Lindsay reached the top of her staircase._

_ "Check the email I sent you," he stated, his voice gruff. "I knew you weren't asleep." Lindsay frowned as she pulled her phone away from her ear and opened her email tab; Obadiah's was flashing bright red almost violently. As soon as she pressed on the red font, her email screen was transformed into an article from a tabloid. The title "Weapon's Princess Parties Again" stood above a rather large picture of her from outside the club, her lips parted gracefully as she smiled at people outside the building. Lindsay sighed as she scrolled through the article without really reading it, merely picking out words here-and-there that caught her eyes._

_ "Ok, so I wasn't sleeping," Lindsay explained, moving the phone back to her ear. "Doesn't mean I've heard from him." Obadiah started talking, explaining something long and complicated, but Lindsay didn't want to listen so she blocked him out. She walked forward several feet and pushed on the door before her, engulfing her room in light._

_ The bedroom she called her own is not one most people would imagine when they heard the name 'Lindsay Stark'. Most would assume she lived in a chaotic, color-filled teenage wonderland, when in actuality it was almost the total opposite._

_ Her walls were painted a light cream color, with a white and gold border working its way around the center of the wall. Her king size bed was covered in a plush gold comforter and several cream and white pillows. Two white night stands were placed on either side of the bed, each covered in a small lamp and several photos of Lindsay with various people._

_ Light filtered through the balcony door, which was placed directly across from the teenager's bed._

_ "Tell you what Obie," Lindsay cut the older man off, sliding her heels off one at a time. "Next time Tony calls, I'll tell him you want him to call you, or, more likely, have Pepper call you." She hung up her phone after that, not giving him time to respond. "Idiot." Lindsay walked over to her bed and sat down on the thick mattress. The silence of the room over took her, the only sound she could hear was the metal on metal sound of her removing her large earrings and setting them on one of the bedside tables. Obadiah's words kept replaying in the back of her head, over and over until she finally couldn't take it anymore and picked up her cellphone. Her fingers flew over the keys, pressing the numbers she had memorized for years and at this point came as second nature to plug into the small device. After several seconds, the ringing of her phone turned into an all-to familiar voice._

_ "Do you have any idea what time it is?" the tired voice of James Rhodes asked, instantly making Lindsay smile. Rhodey had been a constant in her life since she was really young, he was almost like a second father to her at this point, though he would always get madder at for the stupid stunts she pulled than Tony did. _

_ "I'm well aware of the time, Colonel," Lindsay said casually as she leaned against one of the pillows. "I'm calling because I just got a very interesting call from Mr. Stane about Tony." She went on to replay the conversation she had just had with her father's business partner. After the explanation was over, Rhodey groaned, which made Lindsay chuckle._

_ "I haven't heard any news coming out of China that would lead for cause of concern," he explained, sounding much more awake than he had a few moments prior._

_ "Neither have I, which is why I called. You tend to hear more than I do, seeing as I only get to go through civilian channels."_

_ "I'll make some calls, make sure he's alright." Lindsay smiled and stood from the bed, phone still clutched to her ear. _

_ "That's what I like to hear." She walked over to the dresser and stood before the mirror for a moment before speaking again. "Now, get to sleep Colonel, do you have any idea what time it is?" Rhodey laughed as Lindsay hung up and placed her phone on the dresser before her. Taking a single deep breath, she looked at herself in the mirror and finally realized just how quiet her home truly was at that moment. "Why is this so comfortable?" With a small smile plastered to her face the entire time, Lindsay slowly removed both sets of her ears and her the two rings that took their places on both index fingers. She was about to turn around and head into her closet, in hopes of removing her extremely tight dress, when she noticed an outline of something in the corner of her room. No normal person would have noticed the subtle change in her room layout, but since she was slightly OCD, she made note of the change right away. Pursing her lips, she shifted her hands slightly on the dresser until her palms were running along the smooth metal of her letter opener. _

_ As quickly as humanly possible, she threw herself around and released the blade, watching it fly across the room and embed itself in the nearby wall, which in turn made the outline jump slightly and let out a muffled sound._

_ "Next time I won't miss," Lindsay stated, glaring slightly at the figure who was now moving around freely, no longer needing to hide from the young girl. _

_ "Alright, alright." Moving into the light with both hands raised above his head, Lindsay laid eyes on a man with thick brown hair who was completely dressed in black leather with a bow and quiver of arrows slung across his back._

_ "Who the hell are you?" Lindsay asked, her voice hard as she eyed the man before her up and down._

_ "The name's Barton," he said gruffly, lowering his hands back down to his sides. "I was sent to collect you by SHEILD."_


	10. Chapter 10

**Hey guys! I really ****appreciate every favoriting and following this story! I have a great time writing it and it makes me happy to know what other people enjoy it too.  
As always, I don't own anything Avengers related, I only own Lindsay. Everyone else is owned by Marvel, though my birthday is coming up...  
**

**Anywho, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!**

* * *

The pair walked for several minutes before talking, and Lindsay only opened her mouth because she was too angry to remain silent any more.

"This is bullshit!" Lindsay yelled, walking several feet ahead of Coulson.

"Language." She abruptly stopped, the familiar word bringing her back to a time she wanted nothing more than to forget. Fighting back the urge to snap and hit something, she turned around and glared at Coulson, who was just staring at her calmly.

"Don't," she growled, her voice full of a mixture of anger and pain.

"Don't what?" the older man asked, eyeing the girl cautiously.

"Start acting like you're my handler again." She shook her head quickly, sending a piece of her brown hair flying out of her eyes. Taking one step forward, she set her jaw firmly before biting out her next comments. "I'm here for Barton, and Barton only. I'll help you find him, but I am _not_ coming back." With that, she turned on her heels and made her way down the bare corridor, not giving Coulson a chance to speak before leaving him.

The walk to her guest room didn't take her as long as she expected it to, though the constant looks she was getting from people as she went was starting to piss her off. Once or twice she heard people mutter her name, and once or twice she had to stop herself from losing her composure and just punching them in the face. Once she reached the room in question, she slid in the already opened door and closed it behind her, so silently that, if you had not seen her enter the room, you would have missed it.

Silver walls surrounded her on all four sides, giving Lindsay a sick sense of Déjà vu. A single twin bed was pushed up against one of the far walls, situated next to a metal nightstand with a clock on it. The rest of the room was bare, apart from a single full-length mirror and a small upright dresser with her bag placed in front of it. Lindsay let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding upon laying eyes on the bag and walked over to the object. Bending over and slowly pulling back the small metal zipper, she reached her hand inside and grasped her red notebook. The leather cover felt warm against her palm as she pulled the book out of the black bag; she stood up quickly and walked over to the small bed she was forced to, temporarily, call her own, and slid the book underneath the mattress, hiding it from view.

"One less thing I have to worry about," she muttered as she walked back to the dresser. This process went on for several minutes, with Lindsay unpacking everything she brought with her and hiding a few items so 'Big Brother Fury' wouldn't get his hands on them. Once everything was unpacked, Lindsay stood next to the dresser and sighed, debating weather or not she truly wanted to open it. After several minutes of debating, she closed her eyes, reached out and wrapped her fingers around the handles before yanking the doors open, her eyes still closed.

"It's just a uniform, Stark," she muttered to herself, her voice slightly horse and shaking slightly. "Putting it on isn't going to put you in some binding contract with SHIELD." Taking one last deep breath, Lindsay slowly, almost painfully slow, opened her eyes and gazed at the articles hanging before her.

The black halter-top hung like a trophy from a previous battle, the red accent fabric that laced its way up the side gave the appearance of blood soaking through the cloth of the shirt. Black leather pants were folded and placed next to a pair of black combat boots. Lindsay eyed the outfit cautiously, staring at it as if it was a murderer, and in a way it was. Or at least the person who had worn it was. She sighed and shook her head; the uniform looked exactly the same as it had when she left.

"They wanted to get rid of it." Lindsay jumped at the sound of the new voice. Turning her head, she had to suppress a smirk after seeing Coulson leaning against the doorframe.

"I need to put a bell on that door," she muttered, turning her gaze back to the uniform. "Who's 'they'?"

"The Council." This did make Lindsay smirk; The Council never liked her. Something about her being too reckless and becoming too invested in her missions, and they may have been right, but what did they know? They had never had to do half of what Lindsay had been forced to do in her line of work, she was fairly certain most of them have never even fired a gun.

"How'd Fury convince them not to?" she questioned. Coulson, whose face was calm, walked further into the room toward Lindsay, whose eyes were still trained on the clothes in the dresser.

"He didn't convince them." He stopped just behind Lindsay before he spoke again. "I did."

"You convinced the Council?" Lindsay asked, turning around to stare at her ex-Handler, who was smiling rather proudly. "What the hell did you say?"

"I told them you couldn't destroy something that means so much to so many." Lindsay stared at him for a second before snorting.

"So you lied." Coulson watched her turn back around, noticing how tense she was while looking at the uniform. He sighed before slowly walking toward her.

"The drug cartels in San Jose," Coulson began, watching Lindsay's back for any sign she was responding to his words. "The Senator's children, Taiwan, the Chicago Project." He stopped his listing once he was standing directly next to Lindsay, who had grown much paler over the last few moments. "You have done a lot of good for this country, Lindsay." The young girl blinked a few times before taking a deep breath and turning to look at Coulson.

"Whose definition of 'good' though?" she asked, her voice dull and slightly icy. "Because killing countless of innocent people isn't exactly my idea of 'good'." Coulson sighed as Lindsay once again shifted her gaze back to the uniform; her pale skin not gaining any color no matter how much time had passed. After several seconds had passed, Coulson shifted forward and reached past Lindsay into the dresser, returning seconds later with a small, long case, an intricate design etched into the top of the lid. Lindsay's eyes widened upon noticing the object, her hands began shaking as she reached to take the box from Coulson.

"I managed to save these too." He watched her slowly move her hand up to the lid and removed the cover of the box, revealing a set of blades. Each blade was about twelve inches long with decretive red and black handles; the very sight of them bombarded Lindsay with dozen of memories.

"Hello beautiful," she whispered, lifting one of the blades from the box. A small smile graced her lips as the overhead lights gleamed against the blade, which was so clean she could see her reflection in it. "God, I've missed you." Suddenly, without a second thought, Lindsay spun on the balls of her heels and released the blade, watching it sail across the room and embed itself in the wall.

"Good throw," Coulson stated, his eyes glued on the blade. Lindsay's smile grew yet again.

"I still got it." Coulson smiled at her and opened his mouth to comment when a noise came from his pocket. He didn't need to look at it to know what the noise meant; only one person would be looking for him now.

"Fury needs me on the bridge." He turned to leave, but patted Lindsay on the shoulder before he began walking out of the room. "It's good to have you back, Lindsay." He moved ahead several feet before stopping in the doorway and yelling over his shoulder. "Or should I say, good to have you back, Shadow." Lindsay turned and glared at his back, her next phrase coming out so quietly that she wasn't exactly sure he would hear it.

"You know how much I hate that nickname." She turned and looked at the uniform once more before groaning and ripping the clothes out of the dresser.

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**Hope you guys enjoyed! As always, reviews are ****appreciated! See you guys next chapter!**


	11. Chapter 11

**Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted in awhile, college has gotten kinda hectic. But I managed to get this chapter to a point where I really like it, so here you go!  
As alway, I don't own the Avengers or any of the characters, I only own Lindsay.  
**

**Enjoy!**

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_ Lindsay stared at the man before her for several seconds, wrapping her head around what he had just stated, before let an airy laugh that filled up the whole room. _

_ "Boy," she let out after her laughter had died down some. "You guys really don't give up, do you?" Clint watched her turn back around to her vanity, reaching over and pouring a bottle of liquid on to a cream colored cloth she had laying over a corner of the mirror. "You'd think after what I told the last guy, you'd get the message."_

_ "We don't give up that easily," he replied gruffly, watching her calmly raise the cloth to her face and whip at the heavy makeup coating her upper eyelids. Lindsay smirked slightly at the man's reflection while wiping away the remnants of the rose colored lipsticks that remained on her lips. _

_ "Obviously not." Lindsay set the cloth down on the desk where the letter opener once was and turned around to stare at Clint, who was standing in the exact same spot. Her face was now completely free of makeup except for the smudges of eyeliner that still coated the underside of each brown eye, which ended up making them stand out more on her face in Clint's opinion. "JARVIS?" the young girl yelled out, looking up to the ceiling. _

_ "Don't bother," Clint replied, his voice neutral. "I shut him off before I got in here."_

_ "You shut him off?" Lindsay asked, not even trying to hide the surprise in her voice. Clint just stared at her, not even justifying her question with an answer. She crossed her arms over her chest before huffing slightly, sending a brown curl flying out of her face. "So, what happens now?"_

_ "I'm supposed to bring you to SHIELD," Clint explained, taking a step or two forward toward the girl, who was still staring at him rather intently. _

_ "And," Lindsay started, raising one of her thin eyebrows ever so slightly. "What if I say no?"_

_ "You wouldn't do that," Clint said calmly, though he had a feeling of where this conversation was heading. Lindsay smirked much more clearly now as Barton walked closer to her._

_ "You obviously don't know me very well, Agent Barton," she replied simply, her eyes gleaming slightly with amusement as she remembered her altercation with Ward only days before. Clint watched slightly as he walked forward, stopping only when he was about five feet away from the young woman. She began walking past him toward her closet, only to have Barton wrap his fingers around her upper arm. Twisting her gaze, she glanced at his hand before moving her eyes up to the older man's face. "You really don't want to do that."_

_ "And why's that?" he asked, smirking slightly as Lindsay attempted to pull her arm out of his grasp. After a few failed attempts of moving away from the stronger man, Lindsay sighed and blew a brown curl out of her face._

_ "Don't say I didn't warn you." Clint raised an eyebrow at her and opened his mouth to ask what she meant when he felt a sharp pain in his stomach, which caused him to drop Lindsay's arm. With Clint doubled over momentarily, Lindsay flipped herself over the nearby chair which gave a bit of room between herself and the agent. "Told you." Clint didn't answer, he just quickly jumped over the chair and went to punch Lindsay, which she slightly dodged. His fist made contact with her lip, causing it to crack open again and begin to bleed. The young girl let out a soft cry of pain before swinging around and kicking Barton in the head. As soon as her foot connected, Barton grabbed her ankle and flipped her, making her fall to the floor. She didn't remain there long though; she grabbed Barton's ankle and twisted herself, sending him falling near her. Lindsay jumped up and tried to catch her breath as she walked toward her bed, putting even more space in between herself and the agent._

_ "Where the hell… did you learn… to do that?" Clint asked, attempting to catch his breath. Lindsay, with her eyes still trained on Barton, shrugged her shoulders._

_ "Here and there." Clint stood up quickly, reaching for an arrow from his quiver and taking aim at the young girl, who just stared at him calmly. "Are you going to kill me, Agent Barton?"_

_ "No," he said quickly, not moving his aim though. "You're just not making this easy."_

_ "You expected this to be easy?" Lindsay snorted, rolling her eyes. "Did you watch the video of me and Ward? It wasn't even a challenge, you SHEILD guys don't exactly fight teenagers." Clint didn't answer, he just did the last thing Lindsay expected him to do, he released his arrow._

_ The arrow lodged itself in the young girl's shoulder, which caused her to cry out in shock. The pain wasn't excruciating, in fact she would call it minimal, which she didn't really think about but should have considered it weird. She looked at it for several seconds with wide eyes before turning back to Clint, trying her best to comprehend exactly what had just happened._

_ "Like I said," Clint responded, slinging his bow back over his shoulders. "I'm not Ward." Lindsay opened her mouth to argue when she noticed something. The room was beginning to grow darker to her, and she was beginning to find it increasingly difficult to stand. Her knees gave out and she fell, only grabbing her bed at the last moment to avoid crashing her head into the hardwood flooring that covered her room._

_ "What…the hell… did you do?" she asked, finding it increasingly hard to form complete sentences. It was almost as if she were…falling asleep. _

_ "Neural tranquillizer coated tipped arrows," Barton explained as he wiped some blood away from a cut on his face caused by Lindsay's heel. "I needed to make sure I could get you where we needed to go."_

_ "By… drugging… me?" Lindsay asked, battling the toxin running through her body in order to keep her eyes open. Clint didn't respond to that statement, though Lindsay thought she saw some form of regret flash behind his eyes for a moment. Finally, Lindsay found it impossible to battle against the substance anymore and gave in, muttering something as Clint's face faded from view. "You…son of a…"_

_ Clint looked at the sleeping figure on the floor, finally able to drop the blank expression from his face. He wiped some more blood from the cut on his face and bent over to look at Lindsay. She almost looked peaceful, almost as if she were just napping instead of knocked out by one of his arrows. Speaking of arrows... He wrapped his fingers around the arrow still imbedded in her shoulder and pulled it out, throwing it back into his quiver to dispose of later._

_ "Target neutralized, returning to base," he said into his earpiece, which he expected Coulson and/or Fury to be listening in on. Sighing, Clint leaned over and shifted a piece of Lindsay's brown hair out of her face, his hand lingering on her cheek for a moment before whispering something only he could hear. "I'm sorry."_

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**I hope you guys enjoyed! As always reviews are ****appreciated. Have a great week guys!**


	12. Chapter 12

**Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.  
As always, I don't own anything except Lindsay, the rest of the characters are owned by Marvel.  
Reviews and Feedback are always ****appreciated!**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Lindsay didn't remember how tight the outfit was, either that or she had gained a few pounds since the last time she had put the black fabric on, which she refused to believe was true. As she walked back down the halls toward the bridge, she heard guitar chords echo from her pocket.

"Shit," she muttered as she hurriedly retrieved her ringing cellphone from her pocket. She didn't need to glance at the number flashing on the screen, she already knew who was calling her. Lindsay took a deep breath to attempt to slow her racing heart and lifted the phone to her ear. "Hey Dad, what's up?"

"Just calling to check in." Tony Stark's voice rang through Lindsay's head as she leaned continued walking down the corridor. "What are you up to?"

"Oh you know," Lindsay began, quickly trying to come up with a convincing lie to tell the billionaire. "Just heading to class."

"At 8:30 at night?" Lindsay stopped dead in her tracks, how the hell was it that late already? She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, trying to think of ways to fix the situation she just threw herself into.

"Yeah, it's my… astronomy class!" she explained, quiet proud of herself fro coming up with that so quickly. "You know it has to be dark to look at the stars." Lindsay shuddered at how stupid that sounded before shaking her head. "Enough about me, what are you up to?"

"Just working on something new." Lindsay rose an eyebrow at his father's comment.

"You're making a new suit, aren't you?"

"Not exactly," Tony muttered in a way that did nothing to encourage Lindsay that he wasn't lying.

"Dad, do I need to call Rhodey and tell him you're doing something stupid?"

"No!"

"Then why don't I believe you?" she asked, cutting Tony off before he could argue with her anymore.

"Agent Stark!" Lindsay turned around and laid eyes on a girl, barely older than her, dressed in stereotypical SHIELD uniform. The girl's black hair was pilled on top of her head in a very creative bun that made Lindsay realize she wasn't that important to the organization if she had the time to do her hair like that every day. "Director Fury wants to see you on the bridge."

"Who's that?" Tony asked, knocking Lindsay back into reality.

"Just some freshman who has no idea where she is," Lindsay said, glaring daggers at the person in front of her. "I gotta go Dad, I'll call you soon. Please don't do anything stupid."

"Ok kiddo, I'll talk to you soon." Lindsay ended the call and sighed, leaning against a nearby wall. Did she feel bad for lying to her dad about being a SHIELD agent? Well, not so much lying as not telling him that's what she did with her time? Kind of, but back when she was seventeen and barely home, it was easier just telling him she was traveling the world with friends than to explain that she was throwing herself in life threatening situations for kicks. Well, not for kicks, but that's how he would see it.

"Agent Stark?"

"Have you ever been impaled by a decorative knife before?" Lindsay asked, not opening her eyes at the sound of the girl's voice.

"No ma'am," the girl replied, Lindsay could hear the slight fear in her voice.

"Well, unless you would like to experience that, I suggest you get the hell away from me." Lindsay opened one eye and looked at the girl, taking in her slightly shocked face. "Well?" Without a second thought, the girl took off in the other direction of Lindsay, walking almost so fast Lindsay would consider it almost sprinting.

"Still not a people person I see." Lindsay shifted her gaze toward the voice, taking in the sight of Maria Hill smirking at her a few feet away. Lindsay smiled at the older woman, shrugging her shoulders slightly as she stood up straighter.

"Just not a fan of people annoying me with trivial information." Hill rolled her eyes at the younger girl and walked along with her as they made their way into the main room where Fury, Steve, and Phil already resided. Fury was sitting near a computer, muttering things to one of the agents monitoring the screen while Phil and Steve stood off to one side, Coulson seemed to be talking about something that he found pride in. As Lindsay moved further into the room, she heard what he was talking about and fought the urge not the roll her eyes.

"It took me a couple of years to collect them all. Near mint, slight foxing around the edges but…"

"Coulson," Lindsay said, cutting her ex-handler off midsentence. Both men turned toward the young woman, who was smirking at them. "I don't think you realize just how much of a stalker you are coming across as right now."

"Oh no, he's fine," Steve said quickly, looking between Lindsay and Coulson.

"No Steve, don't defend him." Lindsay smirked and was about to say something else when one of the computers on her left began letting out a high-pitched noise. "What the hell?"

"We got a hit!" Lindsay turned toward the computer and watched over the agent's shoulder as he pulled up various security cameras footage. The person on the screen was tall, she would guess around Clint's height, with dark black hair that fell to his shoulders. Dressed in an expensive suit and carrying a cane, this was not the man Lindsay was expecting to see. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that he had compromised Clint, Lindsay might even call him attractive. "Sixty seven percent match. Wait, cross match. Seventy nine percent."

"Where?" Coulson asked, looking at the screen. The agent pressed a few keys and brought up another page, the video feed still going on the right.

"Stuttgart, Germany. 28, Konigstrasse. He's not exactly hiding."

"I would call that anything but hiding actually," Lindsay said, leaning forward slightly to get a better view of the picture. Fury turned toward Steve who was staring at the screen rather intently.

"Captain, you're up." Steve simply nodded and quickly made his way out of the room, Lindsay assumed it was to go get his uniform on. Once he was gone, Lindsay turned toward Fury and just stared at him.

"Well?" she asked, her voice neutral for the most part.

"Well what?" Fury asked, his tone matching hers.

"Are you seriously just going to make me sit here on my hands while Steve and Tasha go and take down the guy who corrupted Clint?" Fury didn't say anything for a moment before sighing and shaking his head.

"If I say you can't go, would you actually stay here?" he asked, making Lindsay smirk.

"Nope." With that, she quickly made her way out of the room in the general direction of where Steve went.


	13. Chapter 13

The streets were filled with people mulling around, dressed in a mixture of casual clothing and more dressy attire. Muffled conversations filled Lindsay's ears as she pulled the black coat she wore closer to herself as she dodged various groups of people. The bright street lamps and headlights of oncoming cars shone on her light spot lights, but she somehow managed to blend in with the crowd around her, at least no one had screamed her name and swarmed her yet.

"I have the building in sight," Lindsay muttered into her earpiece, looking over her shoulder as she quickly crossed the street, barely avoiding getting hit by a black sports car who proceeded to lay on its horn as the driver screamed obscenities at Lindsay in fluent German. "Any signs of Barton?"

"Nothing yet." Steve's voice rang through the young girl's ear, almost making Lindsay think he was right besides her as opposed to several dozen miles away. " No signs of Loki either." Lindsay looked around the area she was currently in, the courtyard directly in front of the building Loki had last been seen near, and no matter where she turned she did not get a glimpse of the God. Or Clint for that matter…

She was too busy searching for the archer or the trickster to notice where she was going, or who was coming her way, until it was too late. Feeling a sudden force to her shoulder, Lindsay stumbled back a few paces and had to catch herself in order to avoid toppling over.

"I'm so sorry!" Lindsay turned toward the sound of the heavily accented voice, her eyes landing on an older gentleman. He was around the age Steve should had been, or at least how old Lindsay assumed he was supposed to be, and he was staring at her as if he had just punched her in the face as opposed to simply knocking into her. Lindsay smiled at the man and shook her head, slipping from English to German seamlessly.

"No no, it was my fault." The man's eyes grew in size as he realized Lindsay was speaking his language, the look of concern growing in size as the seconds passed.

"You speak German?" the man asked, still in English as if Lindsay didn't truly know the language she had just spoken.

"I studied it a bit in high school," Lindsay explained, switching back to English, a smile still plastered to her lips. "Languages have always been a talent of mine I suppose."

"Stark, chatting with tourists isn't part of the mission right now," Natasha's voice sounded in her ear, making Lindsay bite her lips in order to not snap at the red head. "You're supposed to be looking for Loki." Lindsay, still smiling as best she could at the older man, was about to respond to the annoyed tone of the fellow agent in a way that didn't make her look insane to the person she was currently in front of, when the sound of screams caused both of them to whip around.

People were sprinting out of the building behind Lindsay, many of them with looks of terror plastered to their faces. Lindsay watched as the crowd began to disperse, her eyes growing even wider as she found the source of the chaos.

"Found him," she bit out quickly, rushing toward the God. Loki was walking calmly down the steps of the building, dressed in a completely different outfit then he had been wearing in the video feed Lindsay had seen hours before. What he was wearing now looked more like something she remembered from her high school mythology textbooks, almost looking like the stupid things they make villains wear in those movies Alex made her watch.

"Lindsay, what's going on?" Steve asked, though Lindsay couldn't give him a response as she attempted to avoid getting knocked over by people running in the opposite direction of her.

"Kneel!" Loki screamed out, causing the crowd to jump and Lindsay to pause her movements. Next thing the young girl knew, there went from being one God in front of her to having dozens surrounding the entire crowd, blocking any chance any of them had at an escape. With no other options in sight, Lindsay, along with the rest of the crowd, did the only thing they could do, they slowly got down on their knees before the God, who was now smiling.

"Is not this simpler?" he asked with a sick little smile on his face. He began walking around the kneeling crowd, unknowingly walking directly next to Lindsay, who wanted nothing more than to reach out and trip him. "It is the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power."

"Can I kill him yet?" Lindsay muttered into her earpiece. She didn't get a response, but she had a feeling they all heard her. Loki turned and looked around before speaking again, his smile still on his face.

"You were made to be ruled." He looked in Lindsay's direction and, even though she knew it was insane, she felt like he was staring directly at her. "In the end, you will always kneel." Silence overtook the crowd, seeing as many of the people surrounding her were too afraid to open their mouths. Finally, once Lindsay was convinced the crowd was going to remain on their knees before this psychopath, something shocking happened. The old man Lindsay had met only moments before stood up, staring directly at Loki with a blank look on his face. His coat fluttered slightly in the wind as she took a deep breath and spoke.

"Not to men like you." Loki stared at him for a moment before smirking slightly.

"There are no men like me." The man didn't falter in his stance, if anything he stood even taller and his gaze seemed to glow even brighter as the fire behind his eyes grew.

"There are _always _men like you." Loki just stared at him, his smirk vanished by now as the air of the area began to change. Lindsay could tell some of the people around her were considering standing and going against the man before them, but she wasn't one of them because she knew that this group has no way of fighting Loki off. Loki eventually chuckled as he lifted his scepter higher, looking around the group before him.

"Look to your elder, people."

"Cap, now would be the time to help out," Lindsay muttered into the earpiece, her eyes glued to Loki as the scepter began to grow brighter.

"Let him be an example." Before Lindsay could do anything to help, a light beam was released from the scepter straight at the old man, whose eyes were closed as though he did not want to see what was about to happen to him. Just as the beam was about to collide with the old man, Steve jumped in front of him, ricocheting the beam into a wall, away from all the people. Lindsay let out the breath she was holding as she watched Steve stand up slowly, still standing directly between Loki and the old man.

"You know," Steve stated, his voice resonating through the square. "the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everyone else, we ended up disagreeing." Lindsay was standing at this point, the black of her uniform blending in with the dark; she watched as Loki stared at Steve, his sick smirk back on his face.

"The solider; a man out of time."

"He's not the one out of time," Lindsay said, gaining Loki's attention. He turned and looked at her, his expression blank as though he didn't completely understand exactly who she was. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but was cut off by the sound of the Quinjet flying down near Steve.

"Loki, drop the weapon and stand down." Natasha's voice filled the square, making Lindsay roll her eyes. In the blink of an eye, Loki fired a shot from the scepter at the Quinjet, which somehow Natasha managed to avoid. With his eyes still trained on the retreating form of the Quinjet, Loki missed Steve throwing his shield at the god, which collided with his chest.

Everything after that was a mad rush. People began running in every direction, anywhere they could to avoid being caught in the crossfire of the Trickster and Captain America. Lindsay tried her hardest to push around them, to get near Steve as he began battling Loki, but she couldn't get around the crowds. Once Lindsay finally got through the group, she got a glance at Steve, who was on his knees with Loki's scepter pressed against his head.

"Kneel," he growled, his eyes shooting into the back of the other man's head.

"Not today!" he cried, flipping himself over. Lindsay gripped the handle of one of her knives and threw it at Loki, watching as it sliced his cheek, which gave her a sick sense of satisfaction.

Suddenly, the iconic guitar chords of AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" began playing quiet loudly throughout the square, causing all three people to stop fighting and stare up at the jet. A ray of light began flying toward the jet and eventually toward them; when Lindsay figured out exactly what the ray of light was, she felt herself stiffen.

"Tasha," she muttered into her earpiece, her voice soft and not the normal strong tone the redhead was used to hearing. "Please tell me that isn't who I think it is." Before the fellow agent could answer her, Lindsay's fear was realized. Iron Man landed between Steve and Loki and blasted the Trickster in the chest, sending him flying into a set of stairs near Lindsay. She turned her gaze toward the suit, watching as all available weapons were activated and aimed at Loki, who was simply staring at the red and gold figure before him.

"Make your move, Reindeer Games," Tony bit out, his hands raised toward Loki in a threatening manner. The god sat in silence for a few seconds before slowly raising his hands over his head, causing his armor to dissolve until he was only wearing his normal clothes. Once he realized the danger was gone, Tony lowered his hands, effectively vanishing the weapons. "Good move."

"Mr. Stark," Steve let out, wiping some of the sweat from his forehead. Tony looked at him out of the corner of his eye from underneath his mask.

"Captain." The Quinjet landed several feet behind Steve, who had moved forward and yanked Loki to his feet. He turned toward Lindsay, who had managed to remain out of eyesight of both men until this point, and raised one of his blond eyebrows at the young girl.

"You ok there Shadow?" Lindsay felt like the air was getting heavier by the minute and there was nothing to do about it. She turned toward Steve and nodded slowly, following him toward the Quinjet as they led the nonstruggling god to his new "palace". She was about five feet away until she heard the voice of her father.

"Lindsay?" She stopped suddenly, letting the shocked sound of his voice set into her system before turning slightly to see his face, which was no longer covered with his mask.

"Hey Daddy," Lindsay let out, trying to make her voice sound as sweet as humanly possible. Once Tony was completely sure the black clad figure before him was in fact his daughter, his expression changed from one of confusion to one that was a mixture of shock and anger. He crossed the area between his daughter and himself in three steps and stood right before her, glaring down at her.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked, his words coming out quickly. "You told me you were at school! What the hell is going on? And why did Capsicle just call you Shadow?" Lindsay simply sighed and blew a brown curl out of her face.

"It's actually a long story."

"I've got time," Tony bit out, still glaring at his daughter.

"Actually, we don't." The pair turned to see Natasha staring at them from the opening of the jet, her arms crossed over her chest in an impatient manner. "Fury wants us back to base ASAP."

"We'll be right there," Lindsay said over her shoulder before turning her attention back to her father. "I swear, I'll explain everything to you later, just not now." Tony still didn't move, instead he just stared at his daughter. "After you, Mr. Stark." Tony stared at her for a few moments before storming past her and into the jet, leaving her alone in the square with Natasha.

"You didn't tell your dad you work for SHEILD?" Natasha asked as Lindsay finally began walking into the aircraft, her face blank of any emotion.

"Shut up Romanov."


	14. Chapter 14

_ "Miss Stark?" Lindsay felt like she was underwater. Every sound she heard was muffled and her mouth felt like it was coated in cotton, it was worst than any hangover she had ever experienced in her young life. Her eyes felt like they were coated in cement and almost impossible to open, though she was willing them too. It was as if the more she tried, the less her eyes wanted to move. "Miss Stark, I know you can hear me." Lindsay tried yet again to open her eyes, she felt like she was swimming up toward the surface of the ocean and when she was about to break the water's surface, her eyes finally opened._

_ She was tied to a metal chair in the middle of an empty room. She was still dressed in the same red dress she had on before, still missing shoes, but something felt wrong to her, or more wrong than the current situation should. _

_ "Finally awake I see." Lindsay turned toward the sound of the voice, her eyes still adjusting to the new light in the room. The figure before her was a tall, bald man dressed head to toe in black, but what stood out to Lindsay the most was the black eye patch covering his left eye._

_ "Who the hell are you?" Lindsay asked before swallowing slightly at how dry her throat was. The man before her didn't smile at her, or change his facial expression in any sense; he just continued to stare at her as though she were a creature on display in a zoo._

_ "Nick Fury," he introduced himself, walking forward a few steps until he was in more direct light. "Director of SHEILD." The words took several seconds to register in Lindsay's head, but once they did she clenched her jaw and rolled her eyes._

_ "Oh you have got to be kidding me," she muttered, tugging her arms against the rope that was holding her into the chair. "You had your guy drug me in order to get me to…" She paused her tirade for a moment to glance around the room. Everything around her was made of silver metal; the floors, ceiling, walls, table, everything, and it also had a slight alcohol smell that reminded Lindsay of a hospital. Harsh overhead lights coated the center of the room and the tables, leaving the corners of the room completely pitch black. "Where the hell am I?"_

_ "That's not important right now Miss Stark," Fury said quickly, staring at her intently. "I think you know why you're here."_

_ "I have an idea," Lindsay replied quickly, tugging on her ropes yet again. "And I think you know the answer already, so why even ask the question?"_

_ "Probably because I don't like the answer." Lindsay raised a thin eyebrow at the older man, still working on the ropes behind her arms._

_ "Well, it's not going to change anytime soon," she replied sweetly, smiling slightly at him as she gave another quick tug._

_ "You can stop trying, those ropes are infused with strands of pure titanium alloy, you're not breaking them anytime soon." Fury stared at Lindsay for a few seconds as she continued to struggle against the hold the ropes had on her, god this girl was stubborn. After several more attempts to break the bonds, Lindsay gave up and let out a sigh, glaring up at the man before her. _

_ "So, Mr. Fury…"_

_ "Director," he said, cutting her off mid-sentence. Lindsay rose one of her eyebrows at the man before she continued._

_ "Forgive me, Director," she corrected, emphasizing the new title. "But as I was saying, drugging and kidnapping me isn't going to change my answer, even if you don't like it." Fury didn't say anything for a few seconds, he just stared at her as she stared back at him. Finally, after several moments of seconds in which Lindsay thought the man had run out of things to say, Fury turned and picked something up off a table that Lindsay hadn't even noticed was there. He turned back around and began walking toward Lindsay, who now had a chance to realize it was a folder he had picked up and was now reading._

_ "Aggravated assault, DUI, disorderly conduct, public indecency." He let out a low whistle as he flipped to another page of the folder. "And this newest one might land you quiet a bit of jail time. Quite a rap sheet for a seventeen year old." All the color drained from Lindsay face as she realized exactly was in the folder Fury was holding, and once she knew what he was seeing, she started struggling harder to get out of the restraints._

_ "Where the hell did you get that?" she bit out, glaring at the older man who was just barely looking at her over the edge of the folder._

_ "As Director of SHIELD, I can get anything I want to."_

_ "Those records were sealed!" Lindsay yelled, still struggling. Fury rolled his eyes, well eye, at the young girl before speaking._

_ "Do the words 'top-secret government agency' mean nothing to you?" Lindsay just glared at him, trying not to wince in pain as her restraints began cutting into her hands. "You've gone through a lot of trouble in order to hide these arrests from the press, not to mention your father." That made Lindsay stop struggling for a second as fear began making its way through her body. "It would be a shame if he were to somehow find out about them."_

_ "What do you want?" Lindsay asked, her movements finally staling. Fury smirked slightly as he closed the folder and walked towards her, he finally had her right where he wanted her._

_ "I already told you…"_

_ "How about you ask for something a bit more reasonable?" she bit out, cutting the older man off. Fury didn't reply for a second, he just stared at the girl before continuing. _

_ "I'm being more than reasonable Miss Stark." He moved forward yet again, but continued to keep his eye on Lindsay, who kept hers on him as well. "I'm offering you the chance to wipe your slate clean, to make sure your father never finds out about your previous 'misdeeds', to stop this newest crime and any resulting consequences and, in return…" He stopped and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at Lindsay. "I'm only asking for you to join our little 'organization'."_

_ "Organizations are things like 4H and the Girl Scouts," Lindsay bit out, glaring at Fury. "What you guys do is kill people for money."_

_ "Not for money," Fury stated, cutting the girl off. "For the good of all." Lindsay stared at him for a few seconds before laughing, the sound of which filled the room. _

_ "How many times did you rehearse that in front of the mirror?" she asked in an attempt to get a response out of Fury; she got none. So, instead, she blew a stream of air out of her mouth and stared at him yet again. "So, basically, you're telling me I don't have much of a choice."_

_ "I'm telling you," Fury began, walking toward the girl who was now sitting completely still. "That the best thing for you right now is to agree to this deal." They remained silent after that, each of them silently thinking over the situation in their heads. As much as Lindsay didn't want to admit this, she realized the black Cyclops before her had a point, this was the only way for her to avoid the press, and her father, finding out about this. So, after several moments of silence, Lindsay sighed and looked up at Fury, who was silently waiting for an answer._

_ "Everything goes away if I agree to this?" _

_ "Every last document."_

_ "And Tony never knows what I'm actually doing."_

_ "Mr. Stark will be none the wiser." Lindsay stared at him for several seconds as the wheels in her head began to turn. After more silence took its toll on the two, the young girl finally sighed and shook her head, sending a brown curl falling into her face._

_ "When do we start?"_


	15. Chapter 15

"Has he said anything yet?" Lindsay's fingers played with the silver band around her neck as Fury's voice rang through her earpiece. As soon as the plane had taken off, she had seated herself as far away from her father as humanly possible, which happened to near Loki. And by near Loki, that meant sitting directly across from the god.

"Not a word," Natasha said from her spot at the front of the plane.

"Just get him here, we're low on time," Fury said before cutting out. Lindsay sighed and removed her earpiece, slipping it into her pocket before leaning back and staring at the ceiling of the jet.

"I don't like it." Lindsay glanced over at Steve, who was talking to Tony. Both men were tense, with Tony staring at the god and Steve looking away from both parties.

"What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily?" Tony asked, his voice thick.

"I don't remember it being that easy. This guy packs a wallop," Steve explained, rubbing a hand over his jaw where Loki had punched him.

"Still, you are pretty spry for an older fellow," Tony said casually, looking at Steve out of the corner of his eye. "What's your thing? Pilates?" Steve turned and looked at Tony, a confused look on his face.

"What?"

"It's like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle." Steve seemed to get annoyed at Tony's comments and gave him a look that almost gave Lindsay the sense that he almost wanted to punch her father in the face.

"Fury didn't tell me he was bringing you in."

"That makes two of us," Lindsay muttered, apparently loud enough for both Tony and Steve to hear cause they both turned to look at the girl, Tony more so glared than anything else.

"Seems there's a lot people don't get told around here," he bit out, glaring at his daughter, which only made Lindsay glare back just as hard at him. She opened her mouth to say something to the older Stark, only to be cut off by a giant clap of thunder and the plane suddenly jerking to one side. She tensed up, her fear of flying suddenly creeping up on her; and to think she had had a handle on it up until this point.

"Where's that coming from?" Natasha asked, trying her best to navigate the plane around the various bolts of lightning that kept appearing before them.

"The sky?" Lindsay muttered, rolling her eyes before the plane jerked yet again, sending her out of her chair and on the floor right before Loki. She looked up, expecting to see him smirking at her or something along those lines, but instead say him staring out the window intently, almost as though he was expecting something to happen. "What's the matter?" She asked, pushing herself up from the floor. "Scared of a little lightning?" Loki shifted his gaze from the window to Lindsay, who suddenly wished she hadn't said anything so he wouldn't be staring at her like he was.

"I'm not overly fond of what follows." Lindsay gave him a strange look and was about to speak yet again when the plane suddenly fell a few feet. A blinding white light shone through the windows, making Lindsay wince and stumble back a few steps until she was standing directly between Tony and Stark, though that may also have had something to do with Tony grabbing her arm and tugging her towards him. Suddenly, without any warning of any kind, the ramp the four of them had walked up only moments before was thrown open by, what Lindsay can only assume is a giant. This man was maybe two feet taller than Lindsay with muscles that could rival those of an MMA fighter and blond hair that could make a Victoria Secret's model jealous. Without so much as a word, the man grabbed Loki by the throat and yanked him out of the plane before disappearing just as quickly as he came.

Steve, Tony, and Lindsay just stared for a few seconds before Tony grabbed his Iron Man mask of a nearby chair and put it on his face, clearly exasperated.

"And now there's that guy," he muttered, moving toward the ramp.

"Another Asgardian?" Natasha asked, looking back at the men from her spot at the front of the jet.

"Do we know anyone else who can control lightning and fly?" Lindsay asked, looking at the red head over her shoulder. Natasha didn't answer her, though Lindsay could tell she was slightly annoyed by the younger woman.

"Think that guy's friendly?" Steve asked, looking at Tony, who was still standing by the open ramp.

"Doesn't matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost." He moves closer to the edge of the ramp, which seems to make Steve a bit antsy but just makes Lindsay roll her eyes.

"Stark, we need a plan of attack," Steve said quickly, clearly trying to stop Tony from jumping.

"I have a plan," he said quickly, staring at Steve. "Attack." He was about to jump when he turned his attention to his daughter; he raised his arm and pointed at her. "Stay." Without giving Lindsay a chance to argue with him, he jumped out of the jet and flew in the direction Blondie took Loki, leaving Steve and her in the back of the jet. Lindsay watched him go for a second before snorting and shaking her head.

"Like that's going to happen." She turned for a parachute at the same moment as Steve, not surprised at all that the soldier didn't try to talk her out of her current task.

"I'd sit this one out, Cap!" Natasha yelled, trying once again to work things out involving the plane and flying it. Lindsay rolled her eyes, noticing she didn't ask her to sit this one out. She wouldn't be surprised if Natasha was hoping this 'mission' would kill the young girl.

"I don't see how I can."

"These guys come from legends, they're basically gods," Natasha explained as Lindsay and Steve finished tightening the various straps of their chutes.

"There's only one God, ma'am," Steve said kindly, a slight accent coming through on his words for some reason that Lindsay didn't understand. "And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that." Before Natasha could question him further, Steve took a running start and jumped from the plane, leaving the woman alone. Lindsay was about to jump when Natasha's voice made her steps falter right before she jumped.

"Stark's going to kill you if you go down there." Lindsay turned and glanced at Black Widow, who was staring at her too with a blank face. Sometimes, like at this moment, Lindsay wished she could read this woman's facial cues, cause according to Clint she has some, or at least she did years ago.

"Way I see it, he's going to kill me anyway at this point," Lindsay said, turning all the way around to face the older woman now. "Might as well make sure he doesn't get killed before he has the chance." And, with that, Lindsay took a single step backwards and fell from the plane, leaving Natasha alone.


	16. Chapter 16

**Happy Easter everyone! I hope you all had a great holiday!  
As always I don't own the Avengers or any of the characters except for Lindsay.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

_"__What do you mean I'm in charge of her?" Coulson stared at the younger agent who looked like he had just suggested the archer jump off the Empire State Building blindfolded. Actually, that sounded exactly like something Barton would do, he just didn't normally look this annoyed about it._

_ "__Exactly that," he stated again, just as calm as he was previously. "I'm assigning her to you." Clint stared at him for several seconds in absolute silence before he finally spoke again._

_ "__Do you hate me?"_

_ "__Barton…."_

_ "__No I'm serious," he said with a straight face. "You must hate me, because that is the only reason you would make me do this."_

_ "__No." Clint turned toward the voice, finding Lindsay standing against a nearby doorway. Her red dress had been replaced with the signature SHIELD uniform, with her brown locks tucked back in a low ponytail. The remnants of her makeup still graced her face, but they were much more subtle than they had been when Clint had collected her hours before. "He hates me obviously." She walked toward the two men until she was only about 5 feet away from them, then placed her hands on her hips. "Why else would he put me in the care of the very man who shot me."_

_ "__If you had come willingly I wouldn't have shot you," Clint said harshly, turning his head to glare at the young girl, who simply rolled her eyes._

_ "__Yes, because I'm going to come with a stranger who had broken into my house and disarmed by security AI."_

_ "__You two are going to get along great," Coulson said, smirking as the two turned their heads and stared at him. "I'll just leave you two alone."_

_ "__Coulson, I swear to god…" Clint let out, but even as the words escaped his lips his handler turned his back and began walking away from the pair, Lindsay was fairly certain she heard him chuckling as he went. Clint just sighed and shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose._

_ "__Well…" He looked up at the girl, just staring at her._

_ "__Well?"_

_ "__Aren't you supposed to be training me?" Lindsay asked quickly, much to Clint's annoyance. He sighed and rolled his eyes yet again, trying to figure out exactly what he did to either Coulson or Fury in order to deserve this._

_"__Try to hit me." Lindsay stared at the older man before her, raising one of her thin eyebrows at him as her hands remained on her hips._

_ "__Excuse me?" Clint rolled his eyes and sighed quietly, still standing up straight in front of the Stark girl._

_ "__Are you deaf?" He asked, much to Lindsay's annoyance. He lifted his hands up in a fighting stance and slid one of his feet back a few inches, no longer standing straight up-and-down. "Try to hit me." She stared at him for several seconds before she finally opened her mouth._

_ "__I'm not going to…" She got immediately cut off as Clint's fist collided with her jaw, knocking her back a few steps._

_Lindsay didn't know what to think as she cautiously raised a hand to her jaw, touching the area lightly. It was tender to touch and hurt slightly as her fingers brushed over the skin, but as she pulled her hand back she didn't notice any blood. "What the hell?"_

_ "__Keep your hands up," Clint said calmly, his hands still raised. Lindsay remained silent, though her eyes grew wide as she stared at Clint like he was crazy._

_ "__Are you serious?" She continued to stare at him, annoyance clearly evident on her face. "I thought you were supposed to be training me!"_

_ "__This is how I learned," Clint explained, his hands still raised, thought Lindsay could tell he was getting annoyed that he was still waiting for her to throw a punch. Lindsay snorted and rolled her eyes at the archer._

_ "__No wonder you're so messed up," she muttered quietly, though apparently not quietly enough because Clint's eyes flashed as Lindsay's words registered._

_ "__I don't think you want to talk about being messed up with me, sweetheart." He stood up straight and lowered his fist, back to being several inches taller than Lindsay while she was wearing SHIELD issued shoes. "Between the two of us, I'm not the one who is the most 'messed up'."_

_ "__How am I messed up?" Lindsay asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Clint just stared at her; this time his expression was that one that said he thought she was crazy._

_ "__Millionaire Daddy's girl who gets whatever she wants whenever she wants without working a day in her life." He took a step towards her, continuing his rant. "I bet the hardest thing you've ever had to do is decide which one of Daddy's credit cards you wanted to use while at Tiffany's. Or was it Saks? I can't remember which one it is stuck up bitches like you use now a days." He had more of an argument planned out in his head, more ways to piss her off and get under her skin, but he didn't get a chance to say any more because, just as he was about to open his mouth again, Lindsay's fist connected with his face. Once he accepted what exactly he had just made the young girl do, Clint looked up at her and noticed the tears forming in the corners of her eyes._

_ "__You don't know anything about me," she bit out calmly, her words coming out in a very calculated manor. Before Clint had a chance to respond, Lindsay pushed her way past him and walked out of the door, leaving Clint alone in the training room._


	17. Chapter 17

Steve sighed as he walked down the halls of the Hellicarrier, replaying the last few hours in his head. After a short battle with Thor, the Asgardian who was apparently Loki's brother, the three men, himself, Thor, and Tony, went to return Loki to the plane, only to find he wasn't alone.

As soon as Tony laid eyes on his daughter who was no longer in the plane, Steve had to physically hold him back from doing something stupid. His screams could be heard for miles, or at least he assumed they could be. All while this was happening, Lindsay just stared at him, not saying a word as her father just screamed.

That was four hours ago, and as far as he could tell no one had seen the young girl since they had returned to base. The moment the plane landed, Lindsay exited it and took off running in the opposite direction that she knew Tony and the others had to go. So now, at the request of Coulson, Steve was on his way to her room in hopes of locating her.

After about a five minute walk from the main observation deck, Steve finally found the room number Coulson had given him. It seemed quiet behind the door, though Steve assumed she wasn't the type to blast music like some of the kids he'd seen during his time in New York.

Taking a small step forward, Steve reached out his hand and rapped on the door, making a sharp noise echo in the hall.

"Miss Stark?" No answer. He tried knocking again, and again he received no answer. After about three minutes of waiting for the young girl to appear, Steve was about to turn around and leave, tell Coulson he had no luck with the girl's room and that he should check someone else, when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. The door he had just knocked on, the door leading to Lindsay Stark's temporary room, was slightly ajar. Reaching forward, Steve slid his hand into the gap and slide the door open wide enough for his to squeeze through.

The room, which was almost identical to the one he was given, appeared to be completely empty. The dresser's doors were wide open, giving Steve a nice view of the uniform thrown unceremoniously at the bottom of the piece of furniture. Other than that, it almost looked as though no one had lived in this room. The bed was made, nothing was out other than the clothes in the wardrobe and a black bag placed against a wall, there were no signs that Lindsay even lived here. Steve walked over to the bed and sat down with a sigh, trying to figure out exactly where the young girl could have gone. As soon as he sat down, the pillow to his left shifted slightly, giving Steve a line of sight to something small and red. With an eyebrow raised, he reached forward and removed the pillow, revealing a small book bound in red leather.

Slowly, almost as if he were afraid it would fall apart from his very touch, Steve lifted the book from its spot on the mattress and flipped through the pages, admiring every detailed image his eyes landed on. Some of the people Lindsay drew he recognized; there were pictures of Tony with and without his suit, one of Coulson, and even one of himself, which he had to admit was incredible. While he recognized most of the subjects of the red notebook, there was a reoccurring face that was unfamiliar to him, or at least seemed semi-unfamiliar.

Just as he was about to turn a page to look at another picture, he heard the door behind him open, causing him to jump slightly.

"What are you doing?" Steve turned around and laid eyes on Lindsay, standing in the doorway with dripping hair and anger-filled eyes.

"I was looking for you," Steve stammered out, still holding the image filled book in his hands. "And this was just sitting on your bed…"

"Put. That. Down," Lindsay spit out, her words so full of venom that Steve quickly tossed the book on to Lindsay's pillow. Lindsay, almost so fast Steve didn't realize she was moving, crossed the room and snatched the book up in her fingers. "I don't know how people in the forty's did things, Steve," she said, staring over her shoulder at him as she slowly opened the cover of the book and walked a few feet to toward the door. "But people in this day-and-age don't look through things that don't belong to them." Steve didn't answer her little rant, just watched as she flipped through the images one-by-one and, even though he was across the room from her at this point, he could tell her hands were shaking. The silence filled the room as Steve slowly stood up from the bed and walked toward Lindsay, who was still flipping cautiously through the book image by image.

"Who's that?" Steve asked, breaking the silence. Lindsay, her hand hovering over the pencil-etched visual, stared at the picture for a nano-second before looking at Steve.

"That's Alex." She said quickly and even in those two seconds, Steve could sense a change in her mood. "He's a friend of mine from school." The chiseled face of this man stared back at Steve, who was drinking in every single detail on the page.

"Are you two seeing each other?" he asked, which made Lindsay laugh.

"God no!" She smiled and shook her head, as if she were running through that scenario in her head. "No, we're just…" She trailed off and tilter her head to the side in thought.

"You don't know what you are?" Steve asked confused.  
"I'm trying to think of a way to word this so you understand."

"Didn't you just say you were friends?" Steve asked, causing Lindsay to shrug.

"It's a little more complicated than that, Cap." She thought about it for a few more seconds before shrugging again. "I'll get back to you on the label thing." Steve nodded and watched Lindsay slowly flip through more detailed drawing of Alex, each picture depicting his doing different things. After about a half-dozen images, the subject changed to one Steve vaguely recognized.

"That's Agent Barton," he stated, pointing to the image of the man in question. The particular image he had stopped her at was one that made her unbelievable happy to see, but at the same time she wanted to rip it into itty bitty pieces with her bare hands. Staring back at them was the hand-drawn copy of the picture Lindsay had hidden away in her dorm room desk. Her smile faltered as she took in the image, noticing her etched smile and how Clint wasn't looking at the camera as she was, he was looking at her.

"Yeah," she muttered after clearing her throat. Steve looked over at her, watching her as her eyes roamed over the picture.

"You know him," he stated, meaning for it to come out more as a question. Lindsay didn't say anything for several seconds; when she did speak, Steve couldn't help but notice how much darker her tone had become.

"I did." She shut the book and walked over to the metal dresser that rested against the wall, where she opened the top drawer and place the book below a pile of her clothes, hiding it from prying eyes. Steve turned and stared at her, crossing his arms over his chest.

"What happened?" Lindsay clenched her jaw tight as Steve's words set in. She knew it wasn't his fault he was confused about her relationship with Clint, no one knew the full story except herself, Clint, and Coulson. And probably Natasha, she bet her life Clint had told his new partner everything, which only made Lindsay hate the redhead more. Steve moved toward her, reminding Lindsay where she was. She turned around and stared at the 'man out of time', the look on her face stopping Steve dead in his tracks.

"Is there something you needed me for, Captain Rogers?" The tone of her voice made Steve stop the questions he wanted to ask her, he could tell this was a topic she didn't want to get into, especially with him. So, with a sigh, he shook his head and looked up at the girl.

"Coulson needs to see you on the bridge." Lindsay nodded and pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes.

"Give me five minutes to change and I'll be right there." Steve nodded and made his way to the door, turning back slightly to see the girl rub a hand across her face. She looked like she wanted to cry and punch a wall, but at the same time as though she wanted to laugh and smile. Steve was going to ask her if she was ok but never got the chance, the door slid close before him just as he opened his mouth.


	18. Chapter 18

_The halls of the training facility all looked the same, making it very hard for Lindsay to find her way back to her 'room'. She had walked down what felt like the same hall at least five times before she finally stopped in the middle of the hall._

_ "__How the hell did I manage to get lost?" Looking around, it was becoming blatantly obvious the she had no idea where she was. What also freaked her out was that, apart from her, there were no other agents around. It was almost as if she were in an area of the base that she wasn't supposed to be in… Lindsay perked up slightly as that notion took hold of her brain._

_ "__Let's see what things the Director keeps hidden around here." Glancing around, she made her way over to the first door she saw and reached for the handle. It was locked, so she went on to the next one, only to find that it too was locked. As she went further down the hall, she found that every door she tried wouldn't budge. She was about to give up and just try to find her way back to the training room when she saw one last door at the end of the hall she hadn't tried yet. There was nothing spectacular about the door, it looked exactly the same as every other door she had tried, but as Lindsay walked toward it, she noticed it was ajar slightly. And, not only was light trickling out of the crack, but also sound. Without making very much noise, Lindsay made her way through the door and into the next room, not even moving the door an inch as she crept through._

_The room she found herself in was dark, or at least the area she was in was. There were lights shinning in the center of the room, which was about twenty feet below the rafters Lindsay was currently standing on. A target was set up on one end of the room, which already had a few arrows stuck into it. Lindsay couldn't help but notice the majority of the arrows were directly in the middle. On the other end of the room, set about five hundred feet away from the target, was Agent Barton. He was standing with his back to her but the signature bow on his back gave him away to Lindsay in a heartbeat. What else Lindsay noticed was that he was talking to the older guy who Fury had handed her over to a few hours earlier, she was pretty sure his name was Phil. Both men were deep in conversation, so neither seemed to notice the teenager watching them from the rafters._

_ "__She's hopeless!" Phil watched Clint move around the small area, anger and annoyance bubbling up under the younger man's skin. "She didn't throw a punch until after I insulted her."_

_ "__Before the insults, did you give her a reason to?" Coulson asked, his arms crossed over his chest. "Maybe she just didn't want to." Clint stopped pacing and glared at his Handler._

_ "__I shot her in the shoulder with a tranquilizing arrow." He shook his head before speaking again. "I'd want to beat the hell out of me if I were her!"_

_ "__Well, lucky for us, you aren't." Coulson stated, a small smirk on his lips. "I'm not sure if this organization could handle two of you." Clint glared at him even harder, which only achieved Coulson smirk growing._

_ "__You aren't helping," Clint bit out before pacing some more._

_ "__I don't know why you're getting yourself all worked up over this." Coulson watched the younger man pace yet again, silently stewing over the young girl's actions. "She did exactly what you told her to do…"_

_ "__Yes, but only after I provoked her!" Barton spun around and stared at this handler, anger and annoyance clearly evident behind his eyes. "Not every job she goes on is going to involve her being provoked!" Lindsay watched from the shadows as the two men continued to stare at each other, neither seeming to make a sound._

_ "__What are you talking about?" Coulson asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're provoked on 75% of the missions that require you to use force."_

_ "__What about that other 25%? What about those times she has to take out a target with no questions asked? Think she'll be able to handle it then?" Finally, after several seconds of somewhat tense silence passed, Coulson took a step forward._

_ "__What do you want me to do, Barton?" Clint watched his Handler cautiously as the question was posed. "You want us to send her back to Stark?"_

_ "__Might just be better," Clint said, his voice traveling the length of the room. "Not like she's gonna last much longer here anyway." Clint turned to shoot more arrows at the target he had set up, the very act of which was calming him down significantly, when something shot right past his head. Swinging around with his bow raised, arrow now latched, he aimed toward the direction the object came from. There, standing tall and glaring daggers at him, was Lindsay. Her ponytail swayed slightly as both men stared at her, neither one had even noticed she was there before she had thrown whatever she had. She stayed there for a few seconds before turning on her heels and exiting the room, leaving the two men alone again. Slowly, almost as though he didn't want to look, Barton turned his body to see what the girl had thrown at him, and what he saw almost made his jaw drop. There, perfectly nestled in the middle of the target's bulls eye, was the knife Lindsay had thrown at Clint back in Malibu._

_ "__How did she even get that in here?" Coulson asked, looking at the object as Clint took several steps toward it, his eyes still wide in slight amazement. As impressive as it was that it was in the bulls eye, what shocked Barton was that the knife she'd thrown had succeeded in splitting one of his arrows directly down the middle. He reached out and ran a finger down the divide the knife had just caused before turning back and staring at where the girl previously resided._

_ "__Still think she's not gonna last?" Coulson asked, a small smirk on his lips. Clint didn't justify his mockery with a response; he just turned back and looked at the knife now gleaming in the light of the room. As he reached forward and tugged the knife from the fabric of the target, he was starting to realize that, as unlikely as he wanted it to be, there was a chance that he had misjudged Lindsay Stark. _


	19. Chapter 19

**Hey guys! So as you all probably noticed by now, the updates have become much more frequent than they have been in the past. I don't know if this will continue to keep happening, seeing as I start working again in two days, but we will see. I know a lot of people were getting upset with the long wait in between chapters, but as I was just finishing my first year of college there was really no time for me to update, so I thought I would upload a bunch of new chapters now as a way to kind of apologize for that. With summer being here I will try my best to keep the updates as frequent as possible.**

**Hope you all enjoy!**

* * *

"I was summoned?" Lindsay's voice broke through the silence of the bridge as soon as she stepped through the doors. No one turned to acknowledge her, which made her stop her movements and just stare at the group before her. Thor, Bruce, Steve, and Natasha were all at various places around a table, the Blond God was standing closest to Lindsay while the rest of the team was seated. "What's with the silence?"

"Fury is with Loki." That got Lindsay's attention. Moving quickly, she ran past Thor and stood behind Steve's chair, watching the feed come through a small television.

"What did I miss?" Lindsay asked quietly, causing Steve to glance up at her quickly before returning his gaze to the screen.

"Fury showed Loki the drop he'd take if he tried anything." Lindsay thought about that for a second before pursing her lips and nodding slowly.

"Threats; always a good thing to give a power hungry God."

"How desperate are you?" Loki's voice suddenly came out of the monitor, causing Lindsay to change her attention from Steve to the situation before her. The screen showed Fury standing in front of a giant cage, inside of which was a very familiar God dressed in green. "That you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?"

"I take it he's talking about you guys?" Lindsay muttered, earning a glance from Bruce.

"You too."

"I'm just here for Barton," she explained quickly, her voice sounding like she was trying to convince not just the room of that, but also herself. Bruce looked like he wanted to say something else to her, but the sound of Fury's voice cut him off before he got a chance.

"How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill `cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate."

"Ooh. It burns you to come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is." Fury didn't say anything, just stared at Loki for several seconds as silence enveloped the room. Finally, his face just turned into a smile as he turned toward the door and began moving out of frame.

"Well, you let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something." Lindsay's eyes, much like Steve's and everyone else's, stayed glued to the monitor before her until it went to black. Once Fury's voice stopped filling the room, it was like someone had hit mute on a remote. She turned around and leaned against the table, releasing a breath she didn't know she was holding.

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Bruce said sarcastically, earning a smirk from the young woman next to him.

"Loki's going to drag this out," Steve said, his voice taking on a new tone of authority as he stood up straighter. "So, Thor, what's his play?" The God turned around so that he was staring at the group, his expression serious as though he was trying to figure something out.

"He has an army called the Chitauri, they're not of Asgard or any world known."

"Why do I feel like I'm watching a show on Sci-Fi?" Lindsay muttered, earning her a look from both Steve and Bruce.

"He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

"An army?" Steve asked, sounding genuinely confused. "From outer space?"

"Welcome to the 21st century Cap." Steve turned and looked like he wanted to say something to the girl, but was cut off when Banner began speaking again.

"So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

"Selvig?" Thor asked, suddenly paying very close attention to what Bruce was saying.

"He's an astrophysicist…"

"He's a friend," Thor bit back.

"Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours," Natasha stated, looking up to meet Lindsay's gaze. Staring at the red head, the young girl felt like either screaming in her face or punching it, either way she was pushing her nails into her palms to stop herself from doing something she may come to regret.

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him," Steve said, bringing Lindsay out of her thoughts. "He's not leading an army from here."

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is like a bag of cats, you can smell crazy on him."

"Have care how you speak!" Thor stated, suddenly giving off an air of authority as he glared at Bruce. "Loki is beyond reason but he is still of Asgard, and he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," Lindsay muttered, looking over at Thor from her spot next to Bruce. The blond stumbled for a second but quickly let out a response.

"He's adopted." Lindsay let out a small laugh, but quickly stopped after noticing the looks she was getting from 'Tasha and Steve.

"What does Loki need Iriduim for?" Bruce asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Because he's bat-shit crazy?" Lindsay asked, shrugging her shoulders. "Just a thought."

"Language." She turned around toward the sound of the voice, watching as Coulson and her father walked into the room. Tony looked slightly pissed at seeing the young woman, as if he hadn't gotten over the fact that she had lied to him about working for SHIELD. Coulson, on the other hand, seemed to almost relax from seeing her, even if he had just called her out for his biggest pet peeve.

"Thought we agreed you couldn't call me out on that anymore," Lindsay replied, staring at only Coulson, almost as if she were trying to forget Tony was in the room.

"When did we agree to that?" Coulson asked, smiling at her, which Lindsay returned.

"Iriduim's a stabilizing agent." Lindsay turned her attention to her father, who walked ahead of Coulson who had slowed his pace once he was near Lindsay. Tony, however, walked right past his daughter without even giving her a second glace. "Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD."

"How does he know about that?" Lindsay asked Coulson, still staring at her father who was turning his attention to Thor. Coulson didn't answer her, but let out a smirk that told her he was responsible for Tony's newfound information.

"No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing." Thor looked like he wanted to punch Tony again, but didn't do anymore than glare at him. "Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants." He moved up to stand behind the control panel and crossed his arms over his chest. "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did." With a confused look on his face, Tony moved his hand up to cover one of his eyes before speaking again. "How does Fury do this?"

"He turns," Lindsay bit out, staring at Tony as he attempted this action.

"Sounds exhausting." He turned back to the group behind him, glancing at all of them as he moved away from the control panel. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily," Tony explained, not even noticing his daughter tense at the very mention of the agent. "Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Lindsay asked, staring at Tony with one eyebrow raised.

"Last night," he explained, turning around again. When he noticed the confused expression on everyone's face, he continued. "The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers?" When the expressions on the faces didn't change, Tony sighed and shook his head. "Am I the only one who did the reading?"

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asked, clearly trying to defuse the tension that was growing in the room.

"He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Bruce explained, rubbing the bridge of his nose as Tony turned to look at him.

"Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect."

"Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet." Tony stared at him for a moment in silence before a small smile broke out on his face.

"Finally, someone who speaks English."

"Is that what just happened?" Lindsay asked, watching the two science-lovers shake hands. "I think I just found my new step-mom," she muttered to Coulson, who had to press his hand into his mouth to stop from laughing out loud at the girl's comment.

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. You're work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster." Lindsay pressed her hand into her face as Tony's words set in; she let out a stream of air as annoyance took over.

"God damn it Tony," she muttered, not loud enough for the man to hear. Bruce, however, seemed to hear her because she noticed a smirk on his face as he answered Tony.

"Thanks." Suddenly, before anyone else got a chance to say anything, Fury walked into the room followed by Maria.

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him."

"Let's start with that stick of his," Steve stated, walking forward slightly toward Fury. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."

"I don't know about that," Fury said quickly, looking at Steve now as he explained. "But it is powered by the cube." He stopped again and looked around the group. "And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Thor asked, looking confused. "I do not understand."

"I do!" Everyone turned to look at Steve, who was simply smiling. "I understood that reference." Lindsay, out of the corner of her eye, saw Tony roll his eyes at Steve comment, the Soldier still looking proud.

"So, Doc." Tony turned toward Bruce, shifting the attention away from Steve. "Shall we play?" Steve nodded slowly and the two of them walked off; Coulson, Fury, and Lindsay all watched them go until the door slid closed behind them.

"Go make sure Tony doesn't do anything stupid," Coulson muttered to Lindsay, who snorted slightly.

"You think I'm going to be able to control him?" she asked quickly, turning her gaze to the older man. He didn't say anything to her, just stared at her with one eyebrow raised. The stare-off went on for a few moments before Lindsay sighed and shook her head, finally looking away. "You owe me," she stated as she walked across the room and made her way out the door.


	20. Chapter 20

**_I'm really sorry about the delay on chapters! For some reason this one was really hard for me to write, but I got it done to a point where I like it. Anyway, I'll try to update more!_**

* * *

_For the next few days, Lindsay said the bare minimum to Clint Barton. The only time she saw him was when he was required to train her, and even then she didn't speak unless she absolutely had to. The training portion of those days was not something Lindsay necessarily enjoyed, but was something she found that she was actually good at. Besides spending countless hours every morning in SHIELD's state of the art exercise room, which held more work out equipment than she had ever seen in her life, she was finding that she actually really liked the training she was getting involving the knives. Just throwing the weapons at something made her feel infinitely better, especially if she pictured Barton's head as the bullseye. _

_Fury had kept his word; as far as Tony was concerned, Lindsay was spending the next four months in the Ibiza, helping some friends open a new nightclub in the heart of the city. This gave her plenty of time to train and, hopefully, do whatever they wanted her to do in order for her to get on with her life._

_The strain her body was under now was nothing she was used to before, even during her time as a volleyball player in high school. For the first few weeks after she started these workout programs SHIELD had her on, it was like every muscle she had in her body was turned to concrete. She found it hard to move, and when she could it felt like a million tiny needles pricking her at once. But, even with all the pain she was experiencing, she had to admit there were some good results; her stomach was thinning, her arms gaining muscle, and her legs looking better than ever in her opinion. She also noticed she was running faster, could lift heavier objects, and was even getting better at speaking different languages (though she had no idea why they had any interest in her ability to speak anything apart from English). _

_She wasn't the only one who noticed the change the training had been doing to her, Clint noticed it too. Every time he went about training her, he saw how much she was improving, so much so that there were days that she threw more bulls eyes than he did. Even with the amount of time the two of them were forced to share together, Lindsay still hadn't said more than two words to him, which was honestly beginning to bother Clint. He had apologized for what she had overheard more times than he could count, but no matter what he said to her, she wasn't listening to anything that came out of his mouth. _

_The radio silence act between them went on for about two months. In that time, Lindsay had slowly morphed her way into one of the best agents Barton had ever seen, though that wasn't something he was willing to tell the young girl. She had a keen eye for tactic, especially when it came to disarming a large crowd singlehandedly, along with being one of the best marksmen SHIELD had ever had, second only to Barton himself. One day, upon entering the arena where he taught Lindsay how to perfect her knife throwing, Clint noticed something that would begin a change between Lindsay and Clint forever. Normally when Clint entered the room, the new agent was already throwing her knives at one of the targets set up across the room, only this time the targets were still laying against the back wall and the knives were all laying discarded on the table she always sets up for herself near the start point. As Barton looked around the room, he wondered if maybe she had just skipped out on training today, finally giving up on this lifestyle he thought she was adapting so well to, when he noticed her pacing in the corner of the room, her small phone glued to her ear._

_ "__I understand that Dad but I don't think it's likely to happen." The tone of Lindsay's voice was borderline pleading Clint noticed as he set his bow down on the table and slowly made his way toward the teenager. "Because I'm really busy where right now and I just don't think I can find the time to get away." She turned to pace yet again, still not noticing Barton making his way towards her. "Yes I get that it's Christmas… yes I miss you too but…" Suddenly she stopped walking, her head shooting up very quickly as her eyes grew wide. "No! No that's ok, you don't need to fly here to see me." Seconds passed, slowly ticking away into minutes before Lindsay finally ran a hand through the stray locks of her ponytail and groaned. "Fine! Fine, I'll be there! Just… have Pepper email me the details or something. And I will NOT be taking the company jet." With that, Lindsay ended the phone call and threw her phone across the room, watching as it crashed into the wall and promptly broke into two distinct pieces. _

_ "__Trouble in paradise?" At the sound of the new voice, Lindsay jumped and whipped around, prepared to fight whoever was in the room with her. Laying eyes on Barton, she quickly relaxed slightly, though she continued to glare at the older man as she stood up straighter._

_ "__Didn't anyone ever teach you not to sneak up on people?" Clint smirked at her, partially because of the comeback he had to her comment, but also because she was actually talking to him._

_ "__No actually, seeing as sneaking up on people is the main part of my job." Lindsay didn't have a response to that statement; glancing at the archer once more, she sighed and walked pasted him, not speaking to him as she passed. "Where are you going? We have training to do."_

_ "__Cancel it," Lindsay cried over her shoulder as she walked through the doors, leaving her knives on the table without even a second look. _

_ "__What makes you think you can just tell me to cancel?" Barton asked quickly, though Lindsay gave him no reply as she slid through the doors to the training room, leaving Barton utterly alone in the large area._

_ "__What do you mean I have to go with her?" Barton had just finished his own training session when he received a call from Coulson, telling him he had an assignment for him. Thinking he was being sent out to silence someone of SHIELD's radar, he was actually happy to get away from Lindsay Stark for a few days, the radio silence between the two was starting to get on his nerves. Little did he know that Lindsay Stark was the assignment._

_ "__We need you to go with her to New York for a few days to keep her father in line. Apparently he's threatened to fly to Ibiza if Lindsay doesn't present herself to Stark's annual Christmas party." Phil looked up from one of the files spread out across his desk, a small smirk plastered on his face. "What part of that isn't making sense?"_

_ "__Sir." Barton took a step toward the desk, his eyes still glued to Coulson's. "With all due respect, you promised I could get the holidays off this year, and…"_

_ "__Barton," Coulson cut him off, holding up one of his hands. "I know what I told you, but this isn't from me. This comes straight from Fury. If I had my way, Agent Stark would be able to travel to New York by herself and none of us would have to work on Christmas, but apparently the Director thinks that if Agent Stark is allowed to travel alone, we will never see her again." _

_ "__He may not be wrong," Barton muttered under his breath, quietly enough that Coulson didn't seem to hear him. "Why not send another agent, like Ward." That got Coulson's attention. He looked up once again and raised an eyebrow at the younger man, surprise etched on his face._

_ "__You want to send the agent who couldn't capture her the first time with her to a city with a population of 2.35 million people?" He looked down at the folders again, though he continued to speak to Barton. "You have much more faith in him than I do."_

_ "__Ok, so not Ward." Clint ran a hand over the bridge of his nose, trying to stop the imminent headache he felt coming on. "But there has to be someone else, anyone else…"_

_ "__Barton." The tone of his handler's voice made the younger man stop mid-complaint. "This one is over my head. I'm sorry, but there is nothing I can do for you on this one." With that, Barton knew there was nothing he could do. It looked like he was spending his Christmas with Lindsay Stark and her family. With that, he got up and left the room in anger, ignoring Coulson as he cried his name, which echoed out of the room and down the hall._


	21. Chapter 21

"Remind me why you're here again?" Lindsay, for what felt like the hundredth time since she joined Tony and Bruce in the lab, looked up from her cell phone and the conversation she was having with Alex, and glanced at the her father, who was staring at her from his spot behind the computer screen.

"Because Coulson and Fury want me to keep an eye on you," she said quickly, shifting her gaze back to the object in her hands.

"Why?"

"No idea," she stated, not even looking up from the message she was typing. "Couldn't possibly be because they thought you would do something stupid." She glances up at him, a small smirk lacing its way along her face. Tony looked like he wanted to say something else to the girl, but Bruce's voice cut him off.

"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract," he explained, waving some weird wand-object over the scepter. "But it will take weeks to know for sure." Tony, turning his attention away from his daughter, looked at Bruce over the computer monitor before him.

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops." Lindsay rolled her eyes at the older man, officially checking out as he began spurting out science related jargon. Bruce looked up at him slightly before smirking and looking down again.

"All I packed was a tooth brush." Tony chuckled slightly at the other man's comment; even Lindsay couldn't hold back a smile.

"You know," Tony began, moving slightly toward Bruce. "You should come by Stark Towers sometimes. Top ten floors, all R &amp; D. You'd love it, it's like candy land."

"Thanks," Bruce said, cutting him off. "But the last time I was in New York I kind of… broke Harlem."

"You didn't make it any worst than it already was," Lindsay muttered, not looking up from her phone. Bruce looked over at her and smiled, clearly appreciating her comment.

"Well," Tony let out, regaining Bruce's attention. "I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises." Suddenly, Tony pulled a miniature electrode out of his pocket and poked Bruce in the arm with it. The scientist in question let out a sudden noise, which made Lindsay drop her phone and whip toward the two adults, who were now staring at each other.

"Nothing?" Tony asked, eyeing Bruce up and down.

"Hey!" Steve walked into the lab, glaring at both adults as he stood directly behind Lindsay's chair. "Are you nuts?" Tony ignored him and just kept staring at Bruce.

"You really have a lid on it, don't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

"That last one would be your secret," Lindsay stated, earning a smirk from Tony.

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asked, glaring at the older man as he gained his attention.

"Funny things are." Lindsay rolled her eyes at her father's comment; she could feel the annoyance coming off Steve in waves from his spot behind her.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny." He paused for a second before turning his gaze to Bruce. "No offense, Doc."

"It's alright," Bruce said quickly, holding up his hand. "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."

"You're tiptoeing, big man," Tony said, moving away form Bruce. "You need to strut."

"And you need to focus on the problem." Tony turned toward Steve and glared at the younger man.

"You think I'm not?" He asked, his voice drawn out quickly. "Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before?"

"Maybe because he didn't need us before?" Lindsay asked, glancing up at the older Stark, who simply waved her comment off.

"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve asked. Tony rolled his eyes at the man before walking towards him.

"He's a spy. Captain, he's THE spy. His secrets have secrets." As Steve seemed to consider this, Tony turned toward Bruce, who was watching all of this from his spot behind a near-by table. "It's bugging you too, isn't it?" Bruce, who seemed to have spaced out, shook his head and blinked a few times.

"Uh… I just wanna finish my work and…" He trailed off, clearly deep in thought. Lindsay, upon noticing how out of it the doctor was, rose from her chair and moved toward him.

"Bruce?" He remained silent for a few seconds before speaking again, though he didn't make eye contact with anyone.

"'A warm light for all mankind', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."

"What about it?" Lindsay asked, crossing her arms over her chest as she waited for the older man to explain.

"Well I think it was meant for you." The room grew slightly silent at that point as everyone tried to process that information. Finally, after several tense seconds, Tony stepped forward toward Lindsay and Bruce.

"What do you mean 'her'?" he asked, Lindsay could sense slight fear in his voice that she knew he was trying to hide.

"Well, you too," Bruce explained quickly, looking between the two Starks. "Even if Barton didn't post it all over the news." Lindsay slightly tensed up at the mention of Clint, but even as that swirled around she was still really confused.

"Wait," she said, shaking her head. "What the hell are we talking about?"

"Stark Towers," Bruce explained, looking at Lindsay as realization came crashing into her. "It's powered by Stark Reactors, a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for… what, a year?" he asked, shifting his attention over to Tony.

"It's just a prototype," he explained with a shrug. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now."

"And oh so modest," Lindsay muttered, earning her a light thump on the back of her head from her father.

"So," Bruce began, regaining Lindsay's attention. "Why didn't SHIELD bring him on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?" Lindsay, who obviously had the most intel on SHIELD out of everyone in the room, thought about this for several seconds. Bruce was right, SHIELD in the energy business made no sense whatsoever, so what other possible reason could they have for the Tesseract? Unless… Lindsay felt like she had been punched in the gut as a thought crashed into her head. There was no way Fury was dumb enough to try that, was there?

"I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files." Lindsay, who was still trying to process Bruce's comments, got pulled out of her thoughts as Tony's words registered.

"I'm sorry, your what?" she asked, staring at her father in slight shock and annoyance.

"JARVIS had been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide." He held up a bag of blueberries to Lindsay, who just glared at them. "Blueberry?"

"Yet you're confused about why they don't want you around?" Steve asked, clearly annoyed at this point.

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence?" Tony asked, putting down the bag and looking over at Steve." Historically not possible." Steve stared back at Tony for several seconds before speaking again.

"I think Loki's trying to wind us up." He shifted his gaze to Bruce and Lindsay, who were staring at him intently. "This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't focus, he'll succeed. We have orders, and we need to follow them."

"Following's not really my style," Tony let out as he turned his attention back to the computer before him. Steve, finally reaching his limit with the billionaire, turned and glared at the older man.

"And you're all about style, aren't you?" Tony's head shot up and he glared yet again; Lindsay could tell he was officially done with Steve's comments.

"Of all the people in this room, which one is A) wearing a spangly outfit and B) not of use?"

"Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Bruce asked, staring at the other man with his arms crossed over his chest. Steve looked like he wanted to say something to the scientist, but almost as soon as he opened his mouth he closed it and shook his head.

"Just find the cube." With that, Steve turned on his heels and left the room, leaving Lindsay alone with the two scientists.

"That's the guy your grandfather never shut up about?" Tony asked, looking over at Lindsay as she leaned over to grab her phone off the floor. "I'm suddenly wondering if they should've kept him on ice." Lindsay didn't say anything as she checked over her phone, eyeing the giant crack that now took over the majority of her screen.

"Shit," she whispered, trying to get the messages previously on her screen to return, or anything to grace her screen actually.

"The guy's not wrong about Loki," Bruce said, gaining Lindsay's attention. "He does have a jump on us."

"What he's got is an ACME dynamite kit," Tony stated, moving toward the computer again. "It's gonna blow up in his face, and I'm gonna be there when it does."

"And I'll read all about it," Bruce muttered, sorting through various computer files.

"Uh-huh," Tony muttered, staring at Bruce. "Or you'll be suiting up like the rest of us."

"Ah, see…" Bruce looked up at Tony and sighed before speaking. "I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, it's a nightmare." Lindsay stared at Bruce in silence, feeling sorry for the man before her. Apparently, so did Tony.

"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to crawl its way into my heart." Lindsay looked over as her father kept talking, moving his hand up to point at the ARC-Reactor in his chest. "This little circle of light stops it. It's a part of me now, not just armor."

"But you can control it," Bruce interrupted, cutting Tony off.

"Because he learned how to," Lindsay let out, suddenly remembering how close that stupid 'circle of light' had come to killing Tony a few years ago. She had flown to the STARK EXPO expecting to see her father drinking heavily and cracking jokes but instead, after turning one wrong corner, she saw him checking the toxicity of his blood. If Howard Stark hadn't been a man years ahead of his time, Lindsay Stark might have found herself an orphan.

"It's different." Bruce went back to trying to read the files on his computer, only to have Tony slide his fingers across the screen, making it clear so the two men could make eye contact.

"I've read all about your accident," Tony explained, staring at the other man. "That much gamma exposure should have killed you." Bruce sat there in silence for a second before finally making eye contact with Tony.

"So you're saying that the Hulk… the other guy… saved me?" Tony simply nodded, earning a scoff from the other man. "That's a nice sentiment," he muttered, looking down again. "Saved from what?"

"I guess we'll find out." With that, both men turned back to their work, enveloping the room in silence until Bruce spoke again seconds later.

"You might not like it." Tony smiled slightly and looked over at the other man.

"You just might."

"Sirs?" All three people in the room turned toward the sound, eyeing the agent who stood in the doorway cautiously, or at least Lindsay did. "Agent Stark is requested on the bridge." Lindsay sighed and shook her head, standing up from the chair.

"Why am I not surprised," she muttered before turning toward her father and holding her phone up. "Since you aren't actually doing any work, any chance you could fix this for me?" Tony didn't speak to her, just gestured toward the table behind her as he turned toward the computer screen. Lindsay sighed and set the phone down before turning toward the tall agent, who was staring at her with a blank expression. "Lead the way, Chief."

"It's Adam, ma'am," the man said, his voice completely serious. Lindsay didn't say anything to this; she just rolled her eyes and followed him.


	22. Chapter 22

_"__So…" Snow fell silently below the cruising altitude of the plane Clint Barton and Lindsay Stark currently found themselves on, but even with the temperature of the plane around him being around 70 degrees__, Clint felt as though he were in the artic tundra. The frigid silence between the two agents had continued since Lindsay had broken and spoken those few sentences to him a few weeks back in the training area, and since then she was beginning to speak to him a bit more than she previously had. But even with that line of communication open, ever since they had stepped foot on the plane only an hour before, Lindsay had proceeded to shut him out completely, in fact she hadn't spoken two words to anyone. "You wanna tell me what we are doing in New York?" She didn't answer, though she did shift her gaze from the window she had previously been staring at. Her eyes scanned the entirety of the older man's face, as if she were trying to communicate with him that way instead of using her actual words; Clint seriously considered reaching out and shaking her so she got the hint that it wasn't working. "I can't actually read your mind, Princess."_

_ "__I thought I told you not to call me that," Lindsay muttered quickly, glaring at him as a smirk grew across his face._

_ "__And I thought you said you wouldn't talk to me again." He smirked wider as Lindsay realized what he was talking about, which caused her to glare even harder. "Seems you were wrong on both accounts." She didn't respond to him for a second, but eventually she rolled her eyes and huffed, sending a piece of hair flying. _

_ "__I'm going to New York to keep Tony from making a bigger ass of himself than is already made." She turned toward the window and watched as cloud and snowflakes whizzed past the plane as it made its way closer to the designated air space. "As to why you're here…" She trailed off, glancing at the older man over her shoulder but not truly twisting her head. "I'm not exactly what possessed Coulson into making you tag along."_

_ "__You and me both sister," Clint muttered, earning a slight smile from Lindsay before she turned her attention back to the snow falling around them. The two of them stayed in silence for a while before Clint opened his mouth yet again as the pilot told them they were beginning their decent into New York, though seeing as the place they were landing was far away from all major airports, neither him nor Lindsay could get any good view of the city itself. "So, how long has it been since you've seen your old man?" Silence followed that question for what felt like minutes as Lindsay blinked several times and twisted her body so she was resting all of her weight against the back of the seat. She seemed to have paled drastically in the course of seconds as Clint's question met her ears, though she kept the expression on her face passive and almost blank._

_ "__A while." Clint almost opened his mouth of ask her what she meant by that when she abruptly undid her seat belt and stood up, moving quickly toward the back of the plane. "I need to change."_

_ "__Pretty sure you're not supposed to get out of your seat," Clint commented as he watched her move, barely reacting as she threw him a rather crude hand gesture over her shoulder. _

_ "__Where is she?" The plane has landed about ten minutes ago and Clint had managed to unload both his and Agent Stark's belongings along with dressed himself in the suit he was required to wear to this fundraiser or whatever it was, Stark was being very vague on the details. So here he was, standing on the tar mat in the snow freezing his ass off while he waited for the teenager to get off the plane so they could move on with their evening and he could get back to the break he was promised. _

_ "__Sir?" Clint turned toward the other agent they had brought with them, who was posing as their driver for the duration of the trip, and raised his hands up with a groan._

_ "__Don't look at me, I have no idea where she went."_

_ "__Should we go look for her?" Clint rolled his eyes at the younger man, how someone so stupid made it so far into the organization was something beyond his pay grade. _

_ "__It's a plane, there's only so many places she could have gone." He pinched the bridge of his nose and was about to turn around and climb the stairs back onto the plane when he heard the tell tale sound of heels on metal behind him._

_ "__Well said Barton." The older man turned his head to yell at the younger agent for being late, but when he laid eyes on the source of the noise, all rational thought stopped. The woman before him did not match the young agent he was tasked with watching at all. Her hair was styled into soft ringlets that framed her face, which caused her eyes to stand out drastically behind her dark lashes. She was dressed in a floor length red gown that hugged her in a way that showed off just the right about of skin while not making her look like a whore. Her lips were painted a dark red, which were apparently smirking at something as she walked down the stairs of the plane, her black heels clicking with every step she took. "I'm going to assume you got all our stuff out of the plane?" Clint didn't answer her, he just stared as she finally joined him on the ground level, holding her dress up to avoid it being soaked by the layer of snow. "Barton?" Finally, after Lindsay began to wave her painted nails in front of his face, Clint shook his head and snapped out of whatever trance he was under._

_ "__What?" Lindsay's smirk got a bit wider as she paused in front of her partner, whose eyes were still glued to her._

_ "__Everything ok there Barton?"_

_ "__Why wouldn't it be?" he asked, which made Lindsay chuckle slightly._

_ "__I don't know, you're the one acting like he's never seen a woman in a dress before."_

_ "__Just get in the car." Lindsay laughed lightly as she walked passed him, accidentally brushing up against him as she stepped around a particularly high pile of snow. Clint stiffened slightly, though he was careful enough about that Lindsay didn't even notice, not that he wanted her to._

_ "__I'm just giving you a hard time. Jeez, did SHIELD not teach you how to take a joke?" He didn't respond to her comment. just turned and watched her walk into the car, cursing as one of the other agents opened her door and helped her in._

_ "__God damn it Barton, get it together," he muttered, grinding his teeth together in an attempt to calm himself down. "She's seventeen years old." He took a breath and held it in, hoping that the silence and the cold combined would knock some sense into him and he would start to see reason._

_ "__Yo!" His eyes snapped open and he whipped his head toward the sound of the voice, his eyes landing on Lindsay's head leaning out the window. Her lips were parted in a half smile while the snowflakes were standing out drastically against her dark curls. "I'm going to leave you here is you don't get your bow firing ass into this car."_

_ "__Shut up Princess." With that and a groan, he made his way toward the car, where he opened Lindsay's door and shoved her shoulder until she scooted over and allowed him to take her spot._


	23. Chapter 23

The walk to the bridge didn't take nearly as long as she thought it would, but by the time she finally reached her location, part of her wished she were still in the lab with Bruce and Tony. She had managed to ditch the agent who had grabbed her a few minutes before, saying she knew where she was going, though she was pretty sure he thought she was lying.

As soon as she walked through the doors, she automatically noticed Coulson and Thor, each standing on opposite sides of the room. She made her way over to Thor first, seeing as Coulson was talking to Hill about something.

Once she got closer, Lindsay noticed Thor was standing before a computer, the monitor holding a file and photo of a woman Lindsay had never seen before.

"Friend of yours?" Thor glanced at the younger woman before turning his attention back to the photo.

"Yes," he replied rather shortly, not that Lindsay blamed him for it.

"She's pretty." Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Thor smile slightly at her comment, which in turn made Lindsay smile.

"As soon as Loki took the doctor we moved Jane Foster." Coulson walked up and stood next to Lindsay, though she knew he was speaking to the blond. "We've got an excellent observatory in Traunsee. She was asked to consult there very suddenly yesterday. Handsome fee, private plane, very remote. She'll be safe."

"Thank you," Thor replied, instantly looking more relaxed. "It's no accident Loki taking Erik Selvig. I dread what he plans for him once he's done. Erik is a good man." The pair grew quiet after that, at least until Coulson spoke again.

"He talks about you a lot. You changed his life."

"They were better as they were," Thor replied, suddenly sounding slightly angry. "We pretend on Asgard that we're more advanced, but we...we come here battling Bilchsteim."

"Like what?" Lindsay asked, turning toward Thor with one eyebrow raised.

"Bilchsteim?" Thor replied, looking down at Lindsay. "You know; huge, scaly, big antlers?" Taking in Lindsay's confused expression, he shifted his gaze to Coulson. "You don't have those?"

"Don't think so," the older man replied, laughing as Lindsay shook her head in a mixture of amazement and confusion.

"They are repulsive, and they trample everything in their path."

"Like drunk football players?" Thor turned to look at her, it was his turn to be confused. Lindsay just shook her head, a small smirk on her face. "Forget it." The young woman watched as the god walked away from the control panel and toward the row of windows, looking down upon the world below them.

"When I first came to earth, Loki's rage followed me here and your people paid the price, and now again." Neither Lindsay nor Coulson said anything as Thor sighed and shook his head, his blond hair moving around his shoulders. "In my youth, I courted war…"

"War hasn't started yet." Lindsay jumped and spun around at the sound of the new voice. Nick Fury stood in the doorway, staring at Thor as though he were the only other person in the room. "You think you can make Loki tell us where the Tesseract is?"

"I do not know. Loki's mind is far afield, it's not just power he craves, it's vengeance upon me. There's no pain that would prize his need from him." Fury, who had moved from the doorway so he was almost directly behind Lindsay and Coulson at this point, looked like he was considering Thor's argument at this point, but Lindsay knew that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

"A lot of guys think that, until the pain stop."

"What are you asking me?" Thor asked, staring at Fury as though the man were making a declaration of war in another language.

"I'd like to know that too," Lindsay asked, glaring at Fury who just seemed to ignore her as though she wasn't even in the room.

"I'm asking; what are you prepared to do?" Lindsay had to stare at Fury for several seconds after those words left his mouth; she had been working for this man for a year of her life at one point, she'd seen him through some seriously dark moments, but never once had she heard him sound quite like this. His voice was so dark that she was actually getting more worried about the situation as the seconds passed, she was almost certain Coulson felt her anxiety too because, when neither Fury nor Thor could see, he placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a squeeze.

"Loki is a prisoner," Thor said quickly, knocking Lindsay back into reality.

"Then why do I feel like he's the only person on this boat that wants to be here?" Fury threw back just as fast, raising an eyebrow at the god, who didn't reply. Lindsay felt the tension in the room rise slightly as Fury's question lingered, so she felt like asking a simple question.

"Did you ask him that?" Once the words were out of her mouth, Lindsay grasped just how stupid she sounded. She was about to speak again to try and fix the situation she just placed herself into, when something happened to shocked her completely.

"I was hoping you would." Silence enveloped the room, no one seemed to know what to say in response. Finally, Lindsay seemed to find her voice again because she blinked a few times before opening her mouth.

"I'm sorry, I'm pretty sure I just had an auditory hallucination. Did you just ask me to go talk to the homicidal god?" Fury just stared at her, not even dignifying her comment with a response. "Ok, I thought so."

"Why her?" Thor asked, gesturing to Lindsay with his hammer, which Lindsay didn't even realize he had in his hand the whole time she was there; did he just carry that thing around with him?

"What he said," Lindsay said quickly, returning Thor's gesture with her palm.

"Agent Romanov was just in there with him, she spent an hour and couldn't get him to crack." Lindsay smirked at the thought that Romanov couldn't do something, but quickly repressed it when she noticed everyone in the room staring at her.

"And you think I can make him talk?"

"No," Fury said quickly, causing Lindsay to raise an eyebrow in confusion.

"Then I don't understand…"

"I don't think you can make him talk," Fury explained, cutting the young woman off with a lift of his hand. He looked at Lindsay dead in the eyes and something in the way he was looking at her made her know exactly where this conversation was going. "I think you can make him sing." Lindsay didn't say anything in response, just glanced between Fury, Thor, and finally Coulson before sighing and shaking her head.

"If I somehow die in there, I swear to God I will haunt you for the rest of your miserable life."

"Deal," Fury replied quickly as he turned toward one of the nearby computers; Lindsay turned toward Coulson and simply rolled her eyes, not even remotely surprised by the Director's response.


	24. Chapter 24

_Barton had seen some pretty fancy parties in his time as a SHIELD agent, but even this was beyond anything he'd ever expected._

_ Bright lights shown onto the Stark building, outlining each curve of the landscape in a different color. Dozen of reporters snapped photos of various people as they stepped out of the line of cars before them. Once stepping out of their vehicles, people walked up a small flight of stairs and into the building, where they disappeared from Clint's sight._

_ "Jeez." He leaned back into his seat as there car edged forward, reducing the gap between the reporters and themselves. "Your dad really knows how to throw a party."_

_ "Well," Lindsay muttered, looking neither at Clint nor out the window as she toyed with the bracelet on her wrist. "He has been throwing them like this for as long as I can remember, so I suppose he just gets better at them as time goes on." Barton watched her as she explained, though he was more concerned with her body language at the moment then the words escaping her lips. The closer they got to the door, and subsequently the party, her shoulders tensed up and she seemed to get more and more uneasy, though Clint had to give her credit; people who weren't as good at reading people would miss it._

_ "Why are you so freaked out about seeing your dad?" Lindsay's head snapped up as his question reached her ears, her eyes went slightly wide before she realized how she looked and relaxed her face._

_ "I don't know what you mean," she replied curtly as she turned her head to glance out the window._

_ "Oh please Princess." Barton scoffed at the young woman, ignoring the glare she threw in his direction. "You've been on edge about this party since you got that call. No normal person who has a normal relationship with their parents gets this up tight over a phone call…"_

_ "Do you have kids, Agent Barton?" That question threw him off slightly, he was expecting her to get pissed, maybe even hit him again, but her calmly asking about his family situation? He didn't see that coming a mile away. The silence of the space continued as Barton tried to process what had just happened, the silence being taken as an answer by the younger agent as she blinked. "Then don't sit her and try to analyze my relationship with my father." Clint stared at her for a few more seconds, thinking of something to say, but just as he opened his mouth to speak, a voice filled both agent's ear pieces._

_ "Sir, Ma'am, we've arrived." Lindsay closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to slow her racing heart._

_ "Joy." Clint watched as the young woman took several deep breaths, her eyes lidded slightly as reporters began to swarm the car, obviously realizing someone important was inside. She opened her eyes and just stared at the window for the span of seconds, not speaking or even, as far as Clint could tell, breathing._

_ "You ok?" She didn't answer right away, but once she did, her face was a mask of emotion, almost as though she were completely numb._

_ "Let's just get this over with." The tone of her voice told Clint it was better to just drop it, so he simply nodded his head and moved to open the door._

_ The sound was deafening. As soon as Barton opened the door, people started screaming at him. It didn't even matter that he was, as far as they knew, a nobody, as soon as he moved his body out from the protection of the car, dozens of photographers started flashing cameras in his face and shouting questions. As loud as he thought it was when he stepped out, once Lindsay made her way out of the car shortly after him, it was ten times worst._

_ The cameras began flashing at an alarming rate, almost so quickly that Clint couldn't tell when one flash ended and another began. The lights didn't seem to bother Lindsay though, who simply smiled as she moved closer to Barton, who had offered her his arm. Even if the light bulbs weren't giving him a migraine, the extremely loud screams from reporters were._

_ "Miss Stark, who are you wearing?"_

_ "Lindsay, how are you enjoying Ibiza?"_

_ "Lindsay, who's the guy?" That one seemed to be very popular, Clint concluded as Lindsay led him through the throng of reporters, only pausing occasionally for photos._

_ "Is it always like this?" Clint asked her once they got closer to the door of the building, the sound dimming as they passed the threshold._

_ "You'd be surprised," Lindsay replied calmly as she dropped the older man's arm and took a glass of champagne from one of the waiters who were stationed by the elevator, rolling her eyes when she noticed Clint's hands were bare. "You get that you aren't working, right? You're allowed to have fun." Now it was Clint's turn to roll his eyes as the doors to the elevator closed behind them, shutting them into the small space._

_ "Actually, I am working." He reached out and grabbed the flute of liquid out of Lindsay's hands just a she took a sip. "And so are you." Lindsay let out a slight groan as he took the vessel away, some of the liquid dribbling down her chin as she swallowed what little had actually made it into her mouth._

_ "Give it back!" Clint didn't response, he simply dropped the vessel into the side trash can, much to Lindsay's annoyance. "You're an ass."_

_ "The feeling is mutual." Lindsay glared at him and was about to open her mouth to argue when a sound above her head cut her off._

_ "Good evening Miss Stark." A warm smile crossed her face as the voice spoke, Clint couldn't remember ever seeing her this happy. "It's good to have you back Miss."_

_ "Good to be back Jarvis," she replied, shifting her gaze to the double doors of the elevator and the machine began slowing down. "Is Tony decent?"_

_ "Yes Miss," he explained as the elevator stopped, the doors slowly sliding opened. "He's in the ballroom talking to Mr. Stane." Nodding slowly, she glanced at Clint momentarily, but didn't say anything as she stepped out of the elevator, Clint immediately jumping out so he didn't lose her. _

_ Crowds of people swarmed around the various rooms, each carrying on their own conversation, until they saw Lindsay. As soon as the pair of them stepped out of the elevator, it was almost as though someone flipped a switch in the brains of every other person in the room, because now everyone was staring at the young woman. No one was actually talking to her, they were just staring as though she were some figure on display, but Lindsay didn't seem like she cared. She just walked through the crowd, which was now parting slightly, and continued moving without pause until she reached the bar on the other side of the room._

_ "Can I get a dirty martini?" Lindsay asked, leaning over the lip of the counter._

_ "Can I see your ID?" Lindsay simply stared at the bartender for a few seconds in silence, her eyebrow raised in her annoyance._

_ "If you want to have a job at parties like this ever again, I suggest you forget you just asked me that." The bartender nodded quickly and went off to mix her drink, leaving the girl and Clint, who had followed her to this location, alone. People were beginning to go back to their own conversations, but Clint noticed one or two people still looking at them._

_ "Ignore them." He turned and stared at her, not talking as she continued. "I've gotten so used to the stares that I don't even notice it anymore."_

_ "Here you go." Lindsay nodded her thanks to the bartender and glanced at Barton over her shoulder as she lifted the glass to her lips._

_ "You going to take this one away from me too?" Barton just waved her off, turning to lean his back against the bar in order to get a better view of the room. Lindsay simply shrugged and sipped her drink, loving the burn as she swallowed the first drop of alcohol she'd had in weeks._

_ "So." Clint's voice knocked Lindsay back into reality; she glanced at him as she slowly set down her glass. "You see your dad yet?"_

_ "Nope," she replied, popping the 'p' slightly. "I'm assuming he'll hunt me down eventually."_

_ "Or send someone else to." Lindsay turned toward the sound of the voice, smiling as soon as her eyes laid on the figure. Lt. James Rhodey, dressed in his usual uniform, smiled at his Goddaughter as he moved toward her, watching as she moved her half-finished drink out of the way and stood up straighter. She walked toward him, getting quicker until she was close enough to launch herself into his arms where he enveloped her in a hug._

_ "Hey Rhodey," she whispered as she breathed in his scent. He smiled wider and hugged her a bit tighter._

_ "Hey baby girl." The two moved apart, thought they each kept the smiles on their faces. "Jeez girl." Rhodey placed his hands on her shoulders and held her at arms length, eyeing her up and down. "You look good. You been working out?"_

_ "You could say that," she replied, glancing back at Clint, who was watching this whole scene play out. Rhodey followed her line of sight to the man watching them, a look of confusion etched on his face._

_ "You brought a date?" Lindsay cleared her throat and looked at Clint, who got the vibe she wanted him to move toward her._

_ "Lt. James Rhodes, this is my… friend," Lindsay stumbled a bit on the label, she didn't exactly know what to address Barton as._

_ "James Cross." He reached forward and shook the other man's hand, who was staring at him with intrigue._

_ "Friend." He glanced between 'James' and Lindsay as the two men dropped hands. "Right."_

_ "Rhodey," Lindsay bit out harshly, glaring at the older man._

_ "It's fine, Lindsay," Clint stated, earning his own glare from the girl. Rhodey opened his mouth to talk again when the lights dimmed, all except for a single bright beam that shown over a baby grand piano, where no other than Tony Stark sat._

_ "Oh God," Lindsay muttered as Tony took a sip of his, what she assumed was scotch and placed his fingers on top of some keys._

_ "What is he doing?" Rhodey asked, a confused look once again etched on his face. Before either of them had a chance to answer, Tony's fingers began to move. The tune he was playing wasn't terrible, Lindsay could vaguely recognize it as one of the old Christmas carols she learned in elementary school, and there were only about three or four notes he played that visibly made her cringe.. The anxiety she was feeling decreased as the song continued, but quickly returned when her father opened his mouth to sing._

_ "Oh my God." Rhodey stuffed his fist into his mouth to avoid laughing out loud as his friend sang 'Jingle Bell Rock' as though he were Billy Joel and everyone in the room was solely there for him._

_ "He's not bad," Clint commented, earning an elbow to the ribs from Lindsay._

_ "This isn't funny," she growled, glancing at the agent before turning back and staring at her father, who was still singing. "He's making a fool of himself."_

_ "You seem to be the only one who is freaking out about it." Lindsay looked at him and was about to start arguing when she caught view of some of the people behind them. As far as she could tell, everyone in the room was smiling at her father, some even going as far as laughing in delight. She looked back at Clint and opened her mouth yet again when the room irrupted into cheers. Glancing around, she noticed Tony standing besides the piano, bowing slightly with a microphone in his hand; her father had ended his show and she hadn't even realized._

_ "Thank you." Tony Stark smiled out at the crowd, owning the stage like the billionaire super star he was. "Hard to believe I've never taken a lesson." That earned a chuckle from the crowd, which made Tony smirk just a little. "Now, when I was little, my favorite part of the holidays was when all the relatives got together and just talked." He paused for a moment and chuckled slightly. "Well, the presents weren't bad either." Again, the crowd laughed, everyone except Lindsay, who was just watching him with a sick feeling in her gut, she had a feeling she knew where this was going._

_ "But now," Tony continued, pacing across the stage area. "The aspect of family is more important now than it was before, since I now know how easy it is to lose." Tony turned his gaze to Lindsay, who had no idea that he even knew where she was in relation to the crowd, and smiled at her. "Love you kiddo." Lindsay, slowly, returned the gesture and assumed that was it, she had done her job for the evening and it was all smooth sailing from here._

_ She was wrong._

_ "Speech!" She wanted to kill someone. As soon as the words were in the air, Lindsay wanted to kick the shit out of whoever had opened their mouths. Within 15 seconds, the entire room was chanting and clapping their hands, trying to get her on stage. She shook her head, glancing around the room until her eyes landed on Tony. He was still on the stage, but he was clapping along with the crowd and smiling at his daughter, or smirking more like it._

_ "You know he's not going to stop, right?" Rhodey asked, staring at Lindsay; between the three of them, they were the only people in the room not clapping and chanting. Finally, after sighing and shaking her head, Lindsay placed a carefully crafted smile on her lips and walked toward the stage, allowing one of the men in the front to help her up the small flight of stairs._

_ "You're loving this." Tony didn't respond, just continued to smile as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek._

_ "I don't know what you mean."_

_ "Of course you don't," she muttered before turning toward the crowd and raising the microphone to her red lips._

_ "Wow, thanks everyone." The clapping and cheering had died down at this point, but there were still people clapping along like she was about to sing a song or something. "I don't think I can top Tony's performance, I mean I've only ever sang in the shower and let me tell you, it's not good." The crowd chuckled, even Tony let out a laugh at her comment. The fake smile spread across her lips as she sighed quickly, looking out among the crowd._

_ "To echo what you guys just heard, I, for once, agree with my dad." She twisted her gaze to Tony, who was watching her intently. "Family is something that is incredibly important to me, in fact it may be the most important." She paused, effectively staring off into the crowd for a few seconds, not really looking at anyone, just spacing out. "It just took me traveling around the world a few times to see it." The crowd sighed, Clint swore he even saw an older woman wiping away tears as Tony moved forward and wrapped his daughter in a hug, which Lindsay readily returned. They stayed attached like that for a few seconds before Lindsay pulled back and looked out over the crowd, glancing around until her eyes met Clint's. They didn't stay there long, but even from the second-long glance he received, Barton could tell Lindsay was trying to tell him something, and she was. As Lindsay stood on the stage with her father, she was hoping Clint had gotten her message. She hoped he knew she wanted him to get her out of here as fast as humanly possible._


	25. Chapter 25

The room Fury had stashed Loki in was much bigger than Lindsay was picturing. Honestly, when he told her where he was, she had pictured something about the size of a broom closet, something straight out of those Harry Potter movies Alex loved to watch. But what she found upon walking into the space was a room larger than almost any other room on the ship, though she really shouldn't have been so shocked by that, seeing as Fury told her it was meant to hold the Hulk if need be.

"Not many can sneak up on me," Loki stated, not looking at Lindsay as she made her way into the room. She didn't reply right away, simply watched the form of the god as she moved toward him. He was taller than she remembered, but the rest of his build was exactly the same from Germany. After several seconds of examining him had passed, Lindsay, remembering why she was there, took a deep breath and opened her mouth.

"Somehow I believe that." Loki turned around rather quickly after that, his expression that of surprise for a moment once he laid eyes on the young girl before it changed back into the calm one she remembered.

"Ah." Loki smiled at her, giving Lindsay the feeling that she was looking at a wolf whose eyes were trained on its prey. "So you are the woman Barton has told me about." The mention of Clint made her spine stiffen, but Lindsay managed to keep her face blank and her posture slightly relaxed. Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared at the God before her.

"Pretty sure you are referring to Agent Romanov," Lindsay stated, not even attempting to hide the contempt in her voice.

"No." Loki walked toward her within his cell, his dark gaze trained on Lindsay the entire time. "No, he spoke of one much younger, with curls of chocolate and an auburn gaze." He stopped walking once he was right in front of the glass that separated the two. "A princess." His gaze drifted completely over Lindsay, taking her in from head to toe. "I can only assume he was speaking of you." Lindsay didn't speak for several seconds as her mind tried to wrap itself around the information Loki had just presented.

"I want to know what you've done to Agent Barton," Lindsay bit out, her voice still flat and hard.

"I'd say I've expanded his mind." Loki smiled at Lindsay in a way that almost made her turn and run out the room. Uncrossing her arms, she walked up the aisle toward the cage, speaking as she went.

"Sounds like you just gave him some really good weed." Lindsay smirked at her little joke but, after noticing Loki's blank gaze, returned her face to a more neutral expression. "Once you've won, once you 'rule us'," she said as she made air quotes with her fingers, the last two words laced in as much sarcasm as she could muster. Pausing a few feet away from the glass, she stared into Loki's eyes before taking a deep breath. "What exactly happens to Barton?" The two of them stood in silence for several seconds, only staring at each other, before Loki let out a deep, dark chuckle that filled the inter space.

"Is this love, Agent Stark?" Lindsay took yet another deep breathe and smirked, trying with all her power to hide her rapid heartbeat.

"Love is for children."

"You are quiet young," Loki let out, smirking quiet evidently at the young lady before him.

"I don't love Agent Barton, and I'm not a child," Lindsay bit out coldly, eyeing the Trickster God.

"What will you do if I vow to spare him?" It was Lindsay's turn to laugh now. In contrast to Loki's, Lindsay's laugh was light and airy, filling the room with ease.

"I'm not letting you out."

"I know, but I like this," Loki said, his voice silky smooth as his eyes gleamed at Lindsay. "Your world in the balance and you bargain for one man." Lindsay rolled her eyes at his last statement while still trying to hide her true emotions.

"Governments fail all the time." She walked toward the control panel on the left of her current location and sat in the chair, where she crossed her legs before continuing. "My generation tends not to care very much."

"Then why do you care now?" Loki asked, causing Lindsay to pause momentarily.

"You're making this more complicated than it needs to be," Lindsay said after several seconds, glaring yet again at Loki. "I've done some things in my life I'm not proud of, and I'd like to make up for them."

"Can you?" Loki asked, eyeing Lindsay rather intently. "Can you make up for that many sins?" He walked toward the area of the cage that was right in front of Lindsay, who was beginning to lose her composure. "The bombing in Puebla, the Moroccan royal family, Velez's son." Loki stopped, smirking at Lindsay who was finding it hard to remain calm. "Barton told me everything. You pretend that leaving makes you different from the rest of them, that it makes up for the horrors you've caused, but they are part of you and they will never go away, no matter how far you run." He glared at her, pounding his fist against the glass, which made Lindsay jump slightly in her seat. "I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you. Then he'll wake just long enough to see what he's done to his once pupil, and when he screams, I'll split his skull." Lindsay couldn't take it anymore. She jumped up from her seat and quickly walked toward the door, stopping only to take a deep, shaky breath.

"You're a monster," she whispered, the sound of her voice coming across scratchy and weak. Loki laughed, getting a sick sense of enjoyment at seeing the young girl before him break at his threats.

"No, Miss Stark. They brought the monster." Almost immediately, Lindsay took a deep breath, which seemed to come out much calmer, and stood up straighter. With a smirk plastered on her red-coated lips, she turned and looked at Loki, whose expression was now one of confusion.

"Banner? That's your plan?" Lindsay asked slowly, the wheels in her head beginning to move in her head as the information planted itself.

"What?" Loki asked, still not entirely sure what had just happened. Lindsay didn't answer. Turning on her heels, she began walking down the aisle toward the door as she pressed on her earpiece.

"Loki means to unleash the Hulk. Keep Banner in the lab, I'm on my way. You might want to send Thor as well." She reached the door but, instead of walking out, she turned toward Loki and smirked yet again. "Thank you for all your help."

"Miss Stark." Lindsay paused as Loki's voice reached her ears. Against her better judgment, she turned back around and glanced at him; he was smirking at her. "I've seen into Barton's mind, he never cared for you."

"That's a lie," Lindsay bit out quickly, then winced slightly when she realized that might have been the wrong thing to say. Loki's smirk grew wider as Lindsay became paler.

"You must be a child after all." Lindsay didn't wait to hear anything else. She walked quickly out of the room and made her way down the hall, getting about twenty feet away from the door she had just exited when she had to stop and lean against a nearby wall because she could no longer stop the body-racking sobs from escaping her throat.


	26. Chapter 26

_Clint watched as Lindsay made her way off stage, Tony following slowly behind her, but he was pausing every so often to talk to random people who gained his attention._

_"Nice speech," he muttered as she went back over to the bar, reaching for her still half-filled drink. She didn't reply right away, just lifted the drink to her lips and proceeded to drink the remaining liquid in a single go. Once the drink was completely gone, she slammed the glass back on the counter with such a force Clint was surprised it didn't shatter. "You alright?"_

_"Fine," she stated quickly, raising her hand and snapping her fingers to get the attention of the bartender. "Another." The man nodded and ran off to get her a new drink, not making the same mistake again by asking for her ID._

_"You sure?" Clint asked, gaining her attention. "Cause you seem a little tense." Lindsay huffed, sending one of her curls flying in front of her eyes as she tapped her fingers on the bar, impatiently waiting for the bartender to bring her drink._

_"You try being pulled up on a stage in front of hundreds of rich people and then tell me you aren't the least bit stressed out." Clint didn't reply to that, not because he didn't want to, but because as soon as the words were out of Lindsay's mouth, the young man returned with a full glass of alcohol. The heiress didn't even dignify him with a response as she took the glass from his grasp and lifted it to her lips, savoring the slight burn that made its way down the back of her throat._

_"You're gonna get yourself drunk if you keep going like that." Sputtering a bit, Lindsay calmly set the glass down and turned around to see her father smirking at her, standing directly next to Clint, who was staring at the millionaire intently._

_"Not if I inherited your liver I'm not." Tony chuckled at his daughter, who simply replied with a smile._

_"You look good kid."_

_"Strange," Lindsay replied, raising a thin eyebrow at the older man. "Rhodey told me the same thing."_

_"Must be true then," Tony replied; Lindsay didn't answer. Clint just watched the pair stare at each other, not saying anything at all for several seconds, almost as if they were having a full conversation without actually having a conversation. Finally, the silence became too much for Clint to tolerate anymore so he cleared his throat, causing both Starks to glance at him. "I'm sorry," Tony replied, turning toward the man next to him. "I must have forgotten your name."_

_"Dad," Lindsay began, lifting one of her hands to gesture to Clint, who was smiling slightly at both Tony and his daughter. "This is…" Lindsay paused, completely forgetting the name Barton had given Rhodey minutes previously._

_"James Cross," Clint stated quickly, reaching forward to shake Tony's outstretched hand. "I'm friends with your daughter."_

_"So are a lot of people," Tony said casually, dropping Clint's hand._

_"Dad!" Tony just smirked at his daughter, especially the tone she took. Clint couldn't help himself, he chuckled at that comment, earning him a glare from Lindsay._

_"Excuse me," Pepper Potts came forward, placing herself directly between Tony and Clint, directly across from Lindsay. She had only met the older woman twice, but she seemed like a nice enough person, personally Lindsay's favorite trait of the older woman was that she wasn't afraid to bitch Tony out if need be. Tonight, Miss Potts was dressed in a green dress that looked somewhat similar to Lindsay's, except hers had sleeves while the seventeen year olds did not. Her hair was pilled on top of her head in a tight bun, but a single curl managed to fall down to rest against her left shoulder. "Mr. Stark, Miss Stark, I'm sorry for interrupting."_

_"It's fine Miss Potts," Lindsay replied curtly, nodding at the older woman._

_"Tony, Senator Stern is asking for you." Tony rolled his eyes as soon as the words were out of his assistant's mouth._

_"I swear that man thinks this whole party is about him," he muttered, making Lindsay smirk._

_"When in reality, it's all about you, right?" A smirk came over the older Stark's face as he glanced at his daughter yet again._

_"Absolutely." Lindsay laughed rather loudly as he father reached forward and wrapped his arms around her, planting a kiss on her cheek as he did so. Once he pulled back, he winked at Lindsay as he followed Pepper across the room, a wink which Lindsay subtly returned. Clint watched the older man leave, then turned toward Lindsay, who wasn't saying anything as she just watched Tony's form retreat._

_"So," Finally, only after his voice reached her ears, Lindsay turned her head away from the direction her father had just gone and looked at Clint, who was staring at her with an eyebrow raised. "That was your dad, huh?"_

_"Boy." She turned back toward the bar and grabbed her glass again, which the bartender, at some point in the last few moments, had topped off for her so it was currently completely full as she raised it to her lips. "Nothing gets by you."_

_"You act like him."_

_"So I've been told," Lindsay muttered once she finished her drink, not all of it, just enough where she had to physically glare at the bar tender when he started making his way toward her to refill the glass yet again; she was thirsty and stressed, not an alcoholic. "People used to tell me I look like him too, but he claims I resemble my mother." At the mention of the mystery mother, Clint's ears perked slightly. As far as he was aware, the identity of Lindsay's mom was unknown, at least by the public. SHEILD had some woman down in Lindsay's file, as far as Barton could tell there was nothing incredibly stand-outish about her, she seemed like a normal woman, or as normal as any of the women Tony Stark ever associated himself with._

_"You ever meet her?"_

_"Nope." She took a sip of her drink and shook her head. "Then again, what do you expect when you get dropped off on someone's front step without so much as a note?" That Clint didn't know. He was about to open his mouth to question her further about her mother, but one look at Lindsay's face told him that was a bad idea. She didn't look like she was going to cry, which would have made him feel like an absolute asshole, she just looked like, as more words about her mystical mother escaped her lips, she wanted to disappear further into her beverage. So instead of asking the question he really wanted to, he leaned onto the bar next to her and gestured to the glass in her hand._

_"You going to finish that?" Lindsay looked at him out of the corner of her eye silently for a moment before the corners of her lips turned up and a small laugh escaped, which in turn made Barton smile. She shifted the glass toward him and was about to hand it over when a sound behind her forced her to stop short._

_"Miss Stark." Lindsay's blood froze once she heard that voice. Turning around slowly, glass still in her hand, she had to force herself to stay calm as she laid eyes on Markus Stane, nephew to Tony's business partner and official pain in Lindsay's ass. He stood a few feet away from her, dressed in a black suit that caused his bright green eyes to stand out drastically, and even though he was only a few months older than Lindsay, he had the uncanny ability to make her feel like she was two feet tall._

_"Mr. Stane." The younger man smiled at her, the very act making Lindsay's skin crawl. He took a step toward her, but continued to keep his dark eyes trained directly on her face._

_"How many times must I tell you to call me Markus?" He reached forward and traced her jaw line with his thumb; Lindsay had to physically stop herself from breaking his nose as he continued to touch her._

_"At least once more," Lindsay explained, her tone strained and very, VERY forced but her face remained passive as Markus lowered his hand._

_"You look gorgeous as usual," he stated in such a way that Lindsay didn't think his Southern accent could get thicker if he tried. His gaze shifted over her whole body, pausing momentarily on her chest, which made Lindsay feel physically sick._

_"Thank you." Markus finally returned his gaze to her eyes, which for some reason made her feel more uncomfortable than when was looking at her chest. Barton, who had been watching the interaction the whole time while leaning against the bar, was feeling how uncomfortable Lindsay was coming off of her in waves. Her face was plain, so nothing physically made him know she was uncomfortable, though at this point Clint knew she was good at blocking her emotions from people, but he could just sense her discomfort for some reason, which was starting to get on his nerves._

_"Hey." Lindsay jumped slightly at the sound of the person next to her. As Barton turned around so he was finally facing Markus just as she was, she felt his hand on her arm, almost as if he knew she wanted to run away from the man in front of them as fast as she could. "I don't think we've been introduced." Markus didn't answer right away, he just turned his gaze from Lindsay, though the look on his face told Clint he really didn't want to, and looked at Barton, taking him in as his gaze shifted from his feet to the top of his head._

_"Sorry," Markus said quickly, though both Lindsay and Clint could tell he wasn't the least bit. "Markus Stane." He reached out and shook one of Clint's hand, while the other one remained on Lindsay's arm._

_"James Cross."_

_"I don't think I've ever seen you at one of these things before," Markus stated, his accent slowly getting on Clint's nerves._

_"I'm not from around here," Clint explained, glancing at Lindsay out of the corner of his eye._

_"I met James when I was in Ibiza a few months ago," Lindsay added quickly, returning Clint's look and giving him a small smile, which Barton couldn't tell if fake or real. "We sort of hit it off after that."_

_"I see." At the tone of his voice, Lindsay turned her gaze back to Markus, who was staring at Lindsay in a way that made her blood run cold. His eyes had seemed to become cloudy, though they were still trained on Lindsay's face. His lips were pulled back into a tight smile, the very image Lindsay knew was going to give her nightmares for the next few nights. "Well," he replied, turning his face away from Lindsay, the smile still on his face. "I won't keep you, I'm sure you're very popular tonight." With that, Lindsay thought she was finally going to be rid of him for the evening, when he suddenly leaned forward and planted a kiss on the girl's cheek. She didn't know what to do, though she didn't have much time to think about it. As quickly as it started it stopped, and Markus Stane was back to staring at her, but this time he seemed to be smirking at her. "I'll see you later Lindsay." She didn't respond, just watched as he walked in the opposite direction of her, leaving her alone once again with Clint._

_"He seems like a tool," Clint stated almost as soon as the younger man was out of earshot. Lindsay didn't respond, she just kept staring in the direction Markus had gone as though she were frozen in place; she didn't blink, she didn't move, she didn't even seem to breathe. "Hey, Stark." Clint reached forward and placed a hand on his partner's shoulder, the very contact making her jump several inches off the ground._

_"What?" She whipped her head toward Clint, clenching her jaw tightly._

_"You alright?" Clint asked, staring at the younger woman intently. "You look like you've seen a ghost."_

_"You're not wrong," she muttered, moving out of Clint's grasp and back over to the bar, reaching out for her glass with a severely shaky hand. Clint just watched her lift the glass to her lips and drink the rest of the liquid in a single gulp, closing her eyes and sighing as soon as she swallowed._

_"What happened between you two?" he asked, moving closer to Lindsay as she set the glass down and pushed it away from her. Silence followed after Barton's question hit her ears as a million thoughts starting flying around her head at once. Finally, after at least a full minute of silence, she opened her eyes and stared at her hands._

_"I lost my best friend because of him."_


	27. Chapter 27

"Tell me you heard all that." Lindsay moved toward Fury at a semi-quick speed, the older man simply watching her walk towards him. She had spent a few minutes attempting to make herself look as though she hadn't just spent the last five minutes crying over something a psychotic god had said to her, but eventually it got to the point where she didn't care if anyone knew she was crying. Or at least that's what she kept telling herself.

"Would I be standing here if I didn't?" Lindsay didn't justify that with a response, just continued to follow as the older man started moving. They walked in silence the rest of the ways, passing various agents on the way who just stared at them but didn't say anything. They walked like that for several minutes until they entered the lab Lindsay had resided in previously, only she was pretty sure the view that greeted them was not what Fury had hoped to see. Instead of working on the scepter, which was still residing in the same spot Lindsay remembered it in before she left, Tony and Bruce were staring at one of the monitors attached to the wall, examining something Lindsay couldn't make out well enough to tell what it was.

"What are you doing, Mr. Stark?" Fury asked angrily, glaring daggers at the billionaire.

"Kind of been wondering the same thing about you," Tony said calmly, turning around to stare at both Fury and his daughter, who was kind of starting to get an uneasy feeling in her stomach.

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract."

"We are," Bruce said calmly as he joined Tony in looking the other way. "The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile."

"And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss." Suddenly, a dozen or so images filled the screen before Tony, some of which made Lindsay's blood run cold when she got a good clear view of them. "What is PHASE 2?"

"Oh for the love of God," Lindsay let out, turning to glare at the older man next to her. "Tell me you didn't do what I think you did." Before he had a chance to answer, Steve walking into the room and slammed something down on the table, making Lindsay jump several inches in the air.

"PHASE 2 is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons," he bit out angrily, glaring at Fury before turning his attention to Tony, who was staring at the younger man. "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow."

"Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're..."

"I'm sorry Nick," Tony said, cutting him off. He rotated the monitor so that the two agents could see it better; a series of blueprints coated the screen, each one a drawing for an intricate gun or sword-looking object. "Were you lying?"

"God damn it Fury," Lindsay shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I have no idea why I thought you would have changed after all these years. You're the exact same perfectionist pain in the ass you were when I left." Fury turned toward Lindsay and looked as though he wanted to say something to her, but was cut off by Thor and Natasha walking into the room, the later of who was staring at Bruce as soon as she entered.

"Did you know about this?" he asked, glaring at Natasha as though he wanted to deck the woman, which apparently was something the two of them had in common.

"You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" she asked calmly, which made Lindsay want to punch her even more. At this point she knew the red head had been listening into her conversation with Loki just from the looks she was giving Bruce. She honestly wasn't surprised by this information, seeing as both Fury and Coulson were listening throughout, but that doesn't mean she was happy that the Russian had been ease dropping.

"I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed."

"Loki's manipulating you."

"And you're doing what exactly?" he bit back. Everyone in the room was watching the exchange, trying to gage both Natasha's reactions and how long Bruce could keep his cool.

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

"Not that you don't bat your eyelashes at everyone," Lindsay stated, gaining Natasha's attention.

"What is that supposed to mean?" the red head asked, raising a thin eyebrow at the younger girl.

"I think you know exactly what it means." Natasha took a step toward Lindsay in such a way that kind of gave Lindsay the sense that she was about to get jumped, but then Bruce began talking, the sound of his voice pausing Natasha's movements.

"I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction," Bruce stated, glaring at Fury.

"Because of him," Fury stated, gesturing to Thor, who had been completely silent up until this point.

"Me?" he asked, clearly confused.

"Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet!" Thor stated, clearly trying to convince everyone in the room, not just Fury of this.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the cube?" Lindsay asked sarcastically, earning her a glare from basically everyone in the room.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war," Thor explained in a way that told Lindsay that that was not a good thing.

"A higher form?" she asked, this time she was the one who was confused.

"You forced our hand. We had to come up with something!"

"Nuclear deterrent," Tony stated quickly, gaining everyone's attention. "Cause that always calms everything right down."

"Remind me how you made your fortune, Stark," Fury bit out, clearly at his breaking point.

"I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would still be neck deep," Steve stated, glaring at Tony.

"Wait a minute, when did this become about me?" he asked, hands raised cautiously.

"I'm sorry, isn't everything?" Steve bit out; at this point he was getting on Lindsay's nerves just as much as he was getting on Tony's.

"I thought humans were more evolved than this," Thor said, gaining the attention of Fury and Lindsay.

"I'm sorry, did we come to your planet and blow things up?" Everyone stated screaming this at each other at this point, Lindsay seemed to be the only one who kept her mouth closed. She just watched as people got angrier and angrier, the noise getting so loud that a dull pain was beginning to form in the base of her skull.

"You speak of control," Thor stated, his voice clear enough that Lindsay focused on it. "yet you court chaos."

"That's his M.O., isn't it?" Bruce asked, looking around the room, but his eyes seemed to linger on Lindsay, like she understood where he was coming from. "I mean, what are we, a team? No, no, no. We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're... we're a time-bomb."

"You need to step away," Fury said quickly, his voice low as he stared at Bruce, like he was going to Hulk-out at any given moment.

"Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?" Tony asked, wrapping his hand around Steve's shoulders.

"You know damn well why! Back off!" Steve yelled, wrenching out of the older man's grasp. Tony turned toward the solider and glared, officially out of his joking mood.

"Oh I'm starting to want you to make me."

"Big man in a suit of armor," Steve bit out, staring intently at the older man who was staring at him just as hard. "Take that off and what are you?"

"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist," Tony threw back, never missing a beat. Normally, Lindsay would have laughed at her father's comment, but somehow at this time, in this current situation, his 'humor' was just increasing her anger. The same was apparently true with Steve.

"I know guys with none of those worth ten of you." Steve took a step toward Stark, still speaking as he went. "I've seen the footage, the only thing you really fight for is yourself." He quickly shifted his gaze over to Lindsay, thinking about the moments of protectiveness he'd seen Tony display toward the young woman. He almost felt bad for hinting that Tony didn't care about his daughter, but it was too late to take it back and honestly, he didn't know if he should. "You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

"I think I would just cut the wire," Tony said quickly, a small smirk coating his entire face. Steve's eyes flashed in annoyance as Tony's answer registered, he took another step forward so he was only about a foot away from the billionaire.

"Always a way out," he bit out, once again gaining Tony's attention. "You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be…"

"A hero?" Tony asked, cutting the younger man off. "Like you?" He took a step forward before speaking again, cutting down the space between them yet again. "You're a laboratory experiment Rogers, everything special about you came out of a bottle." Lindsay, along with everyone else in the room, shifted their gaze to Steve, waiting for him to do something about Tony's comment. The soldier in him must have taken over, because he didn't take a swing at Lindsay's father like she thought he would.

"Put on the suit," Steve said quickly, eyeing Tony up-and-down. "Let's go a few rounds."

"Ok!" Lindsay rushed forward and wedged her way between Tony and Steve, stopping either of them from throwing punches. "Let's just take a breath here and NOT 'go a few rounds'." With one hand placed on Steve's chest and another placed on top of her father's arc reactor, she pushed back slightly, though neither man seemed to move.

"And you!" Tony reached out and wrapped his fingers around Lindsay's upper arm, pulling her out from the space between himself and Steve. He turned toward Fury and glared dangerously, his grip on his daughter's arm not wavering. "You turned my daughter into one of your messed up lap dogs?"

"Seriously?" Lindsay tried pulling her arm away, but Tony refused to let go. "When did this turn into talking about me?" No one answered her question; they just kept staring at Tony and Fury.

"We didn't turn her into anything," Fury explained, eyeing Lindsay slightly as he continued to speak to Tony. "If anything, we helped her." As Fury's words settled, Tony let out a laugh, the sound of which filled the whole room.

"Helped her?"

"Dad," Lindsay whispered, glaring daggers at the older Stark. "Shut up!"

"How the hell did you help her?" Tony continued, clearly not hearing his daughter.

"Miss Stark?" Fury turned his gaze toward the young woman; once she realized what he wanted, Lindsay felt like punching her former boss in the face. She sighed and pursed her lips, trying to find the best way to answer this.

"I don't know if 'help' is the right word…" She took a deep breath and glanced at Fury, who was staring at her with an almost neutral expression plastered to his face. "I'm not even sure it's in the same genre as the right word…"

"Then what is the right word?" Tony bit out, turning his attention to Lindsay.

"Erased? Rewrote? Take your pick." She whipped around quickly, the speed of her movements freeing her arm from Tony's grasp. Taking several steps forward, she moved across the room until she was standing directly next to Banner, who looked like he didn't quiet know what to think of her. "Fury may not have 'helped' me as much as he things, but he sure stopped me from screwing up my life more than I already had."

"What are you talking about?" Tony asked, a look of both confusion and slight annoyance evident on his face. "You've never screwed up your life."

"Yeah," Lindsay snorted, shaking her head slightly. "Because getting drunk every night and periodically getting arrested is exactly how every seventeen year old should be spending their time."

"You've never been arrested," Tony stated quickly, cutting Lindsay off. She stared at him for a few seconds, blank faced and blinking at the man before her, before swiftly turning on her heels and walking to the computer Bruce had been working at when she walked into the room. Her red-tinted nails flew over the keyboard faster then they had in years, at this point running on muscle memory.

"You haven't changed your password since I left, right?" Lindsay asked quickly, looking up at Fury as her fingers continued to fly. Before Fury had a chance to even question her, Lindsay hit a single key, sending dozens of files across the monitor before her. "You were saying?" Tony's eyes widened as he skimmed a few of the documents on the screen was a police report, the name 'Lindsay Stark' showing up in every one, along with a few lovely mug shots. He wasn't really reading them, but a few words jumped out at him: DUI, disorderly conduct, assault, those were only a few.

"How the hell did I not know about this?" Tony asked, his eyes still glued to the screen as more documents came into view. Lindsay walked back over to her spot next to Bruce, who looked just as shocked as everyone else in the room (except Fury, who obviously knew all of this already).

"Whenever it happened, Obie, Pepper, or Rhodey would do whatever they had to do to make it go away before the press found out… until the one time they couldn't." Crossing her arms over her chest, she gestured with her head to Fury, who was staring at her intently. "Enter Nick Fury and his so-called 'help'."

"You forget that, without my 'help'," Fury said, putting air-quotes around 'help'. "You would be living in a jail cell right now."

"Shut the hell up Nick!" Lindsay yelled, dropping her arms to her sides as the anger she was feeling finally boiled over. The pitched of her voice filled the room, causing most of its occupants to wince, all except Thor, who was laughing.

"You humans are so petty." He looked over at Lindsay momentarily before speaking again. "And tiny."

"Way to judge there, Iron Giant," Lindsay muttered, earning a small chuckle from Bruce. Fury sighed and shook his head before looking over at Bruce and Lindsay.

"Agent Romanov, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his…"

"Back where?" Bruce asked, cutting Fury off. The smile Lindsay had given him moments before was completely gone, replaced with a glare at Fury and, for some reason Lindsay didn't understand, Natasha. "You rented out my room."

"The cell was built…" Fury began explaining, only to get cut off by Bruce.

"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know, I've tried!" The room got dead silent as Banner's words set themselves over its residents. Lindsay, just like everyone else, stared at Bruce with a mixture of shock and sadness. Bruce looked around the room quickly before speaking again. "I got low, I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spat it out! So I moved on. I was good!" He bit out, glaring at Fury and Natasha again at this point. "Until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk!"

"Banner," Steve said, drawing Lindsay's attention away from Bruce. It was at that moment she noticed how tense everyone looked, or more tense she should say; Tony kept frantically glancing between Bruce and Lindsay like he wanted to pull her away from the scientist. "Put down the scepter." Confusion etched both Bruce and Lindsay's faces as they looked down where everyone else was looking; the scepter glowed faintly in Banner's hand. She gasped, Lindsay never even noticed him lift it off the table. Banner didn't either, cause he looked just as shocked as she did.

Before anyone else had a chance to speak, the computer across the room let out a shrill beep, signaling a hit on its search.

"Got it," Tony said quickly, breaking some of the tension slightly. Everyone in the room began looking away from Bruce and toward the computer, which had stopped beeping at this point. With the scepter still in his hand, Banner slowly made her way toward the computer.

"Sorry kids," he said quickly, his voice immediately calmer. "You don't get to see my little magic trick."

"Forgive me for not being upset about that," Lindsay muttered, leaning against the table behind her. While everyone else made their way toward the computer, Fury walked toward Lindsay, eventually leaning up against the table with her.

"How did you know my password?" He asked, his gaze still pressed to the group by the computer.

"Wasn't that hard," she muttered, shifting her gaze toward Steve and Tony. "You know, for the director of a top secret organization, you pick the more basic password. I mean, your ex-wife's maiden name followed by the year your parents got married?" She trailed off, her gaze still on Tony.

"How the hell did you know about my ex-wife?" Fury bit out, his voice still low enough that only Lindsay could hear him. A small smirk coated her lips as she looked at Fury out of the corner of her eye.

"Carol sends her regards." Fury's head snapped toward the young woman and he opened his mouth, ready to question exactly when and where she found his ex-wife, when all hell broke loose around them.


	28. Chapter 28

A giant force shook the ship, followed shortly by the sound of multiple explosions. Lindsay toppled backwards, flying over the metal table and crashing against the nearby wall before she came to rest on the floor. Pain splashed behind her eyes momentarily before she finally got her bearing back and slowly pushing herself up back to her feet.

The room was complete chaos. Lights were flickering, there was a giant hole in the floor and one of the nearby walls, and people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

"You alright?" Fury asked, helping Lindsay back over the table.

"Yea," she replied, shaking her head as pain slightly crept around.

"Lindsay?" The young girl turned toward the sound of her voice and she saw Tony. He was standing next to Steve and both men were staring at her; Tony's gaze looked like he thought she was going to die at any moment.

"I'm fine! Go!" Tony looked at her for a few extra seconds before both him and Steve ran from the room, leaving Lindsay alone with Fury. "What the hell was that?" she yelled, trying to be heard over the torrent of noises now assaulting her ears.

"Not sure," Fury stated quickly before turning on his heels and moving toward the door. "But I'm sure as hell going to find out." Lindsay followed quickly behind him, grabbing her knives off the table before exciting the room.

The halls were more hectic than Lindsay had ever seen them. People rushed around the halls, almost as if they didn't know if they should be running away from explosions or towards them. After shoving past dozens of nameless agents, Fury and Lindsay eventually made it to the control room, where they faced a new type of chaos.

The second the two of them walked onto the bridge, people started yelling in a mild state of panic.

"Engine one is completely out," Hill yelled, glancing back at Fury from her spot before a computer. "Engine two is failing."

"Bring the carrier about to 180-headed south!" Fury commanded, walking forward a bit as he glanced around the room. "Take us to the water." Lindsay moved further into the room and grabbed the bar in front of her, gripping it so tightly her knuckles were turning white; she just remembered how close she was, how close they all were actually, to plummeting to their deaths.

"We're flying blind! Navigation's recalibrating after the engine failure!" Lindsay glared at the pilot, wanting to ring the man's neck for making her feel even CLOSER to death than she already was.

"Is the sun coming up?" she bit out, gaining the attention of just about every agent in the room. The pilot stared at her with an expression on his face Lindsay couldn't distinguish between annoyance and confusion.

"Yes?"

"Then put it on the left!" Lindsay bit out yet again; she was officially done with this idiot. Fury stared at her for a few seconds before turning back to the pilot, who was now staring at him.

"You heard Agent Stark." The pilot quickly turned around and began his task, leaving Lindsay time to smirk at his back.

"You actually listened to me?" She asked quickly, still smirking at the pilot, though her comment was directed at Fury. The older man turned his head toward Lindsay and opened his mouth to speak when Maria Hill's voice cut him off.

"Sir!" Maria essentially jumped at her computer, her eyes suddenly wide as if she had seen a ghost. "We've got intruders on the ship." Both Fury and Lindsay quickly walked over to her, the younger one vaulting the bar in order to reach the computer as fast as humanly possible. The image that graced the screen was that of about four men dressed head-to-toe in armor walking down one of the empty hallways, each holding rather large guns in their hands. Lindsay opened her mouth to make a sarcastic comment about them being out numbered, when she got a better view of the man in the very back of the group, a fifth man. He wasn't dressed like the rest of them, in fact as far as Lindsay could see the man wasn't wearing armor at all. Instead, he was dressed in black pants and a black shirt; it wasn't until Lindsay saw the weapon hanging over his shoulder that her heart stopped.

"Is that…" Hill trailed off as the video feed kept going, giving a better view of the man's face. Fury leaned forward and jabbed a single key, pausing the feed when the fifth man's face clear as day.

"Barton." Fury turned to check on Lindsay, to see if she felt up to taking on the four other men and leaving Barton for Romanov, but it was too late. Fury just watched as the door out of the control room slid close, shielding Lindsay's black outfit and brown ponytail from view.


	29. Chapter 29

**Hey guys! Just want to say three things before we go ahead and jump into this chapter:**

**1\. I'm really sorry for how big of a gap there has been recently between chapters. This one was purely because I had a HORRIBLE case of writers block which made figuring out how to word things really hard. That and starting a new semester at school, its just been rough. But I promise that I will try my best to make the gaps much much much MUCH smaller between chapters from now on.**

**2\. I want to thank everyone who has favorited/reviewed this story since I started it. It really makes me happy to know that people like this story, sometimes I worry that I'm the only one who enjoys writing/reading it.**

**3\. This is just a warning, this chapter is a bit on the dark side and for that I apologize, I just needed to set up a key piece of backstory. Nothing after this should be very dark, but I know that one issue in general, maybe two, may bother some people so I wanted to put a little warning in before we get started.**

**Now that all that is said, lets get this show on the road, shall we?**

* * *

_Wind blew around her in such a way that her curls were swinging behind her head rather quickly, but Lindsay didn't care at the moment. As soon as she had answered Barton's question, she finished her drink in a single gulp and all but sprinted from the ballroom, ignoring him as he called her name and tried to follow her, though given that she was currently alone on one of the building's balconies, she assumed he didn't get very far._

_ "__There you are."_

_ "__Here I am," Lindsay muttered back, not bothering to turn her head as Barton walked closer to her until he finally stopped directly next to her, placing all his weight on the railing that surrounded the balcony._

_ "__You sure know how to leave someone in suspense," Clint stated calmly, glancing over at Lindsay who didn't return the gesture. Instead she just looked out over the city below them, listening to the various sounds of passing cars, people yelling, and other noises that made Lindsay feel at home._

_ "__So I've been told." At this moment, she really wished she had a drink, but knew that if she had any more alcohol in her system, she would end up doing something stupid, so instead she silently bit the inside of her check to keep her neutral expression constant._

_ "__So," Clint began, knocking Lindsay out of her thoughts. "You going to tell me what you meant by your comment in there?"_

_ "__Do I have to?" she asked, still not looking at him. _

_ "__I mean, no." He twisted himself around so his back was resting against the railing, his gaze still trained on the younger woman's blank face. "But it's going to help me understand why a seemingly normal teenage boy had the ability to turn a SHIELD agent into a scared child."_

_ "__You're so funny," Lindsay muttered, rolling her eyes at the older man's comment, more so at his smirk that he was now giving her. Silence followed after that for a few seconds as Lindsay tried to figure out exactly what she wanted to tell Barton, or even if she wanted to tell him anything at all. "Remember the first time we met, when you asked where I learned to fight?"_

_ "__Vaguely," Clint replied curtly, reaching up and rubbing the side of his head as memories of the first time he'd met Lindsay Stark came back. _

_ "__Right after I graduated high school, Markus and I took a trip to Spain." Lindsay paused when she noticed the shocked expression that took over Clint's face, which internally made her roll her eyes. "Don't give me that look, it was Tony's idea." Barton didn't reply, just stared at her as he waited for her to continue. "Anyway, we went on this trip after I graduated, he's older so he was already out of school at this point, and because of how amazingly we get along," Lindsay paused, making sure Clint picked up on her obvious sarcasm, before continuing. "Tony thought it would be a good idea if I brought a friend along with me, so my best friend Tanya came with." She paused slightly, her power of speech faltering as images of her friend began fluttering through her head. Clint watched her struggle for a moment, trying to think of the best way to get information out of Lindsay without furthering the pain she seemed to be feeling already. "Markus always had a thing for her but she was in a relationship at the time, also she kind of thought he was a tool." She let out with a small chuckle, but paused once again after that._

_ "__What happened?" She closed her eyes and sighed, opening them shortly after as a single tear rolled down her cheek._

_ "__Markus isn't used to being told no."_

_ "__So what happened?" Clint asked again, searching for more information even though he was beginning to put the pieces together. Lindsay glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes slightly red as she tried to the best of her ability not to cry._

_ "__Tanya told him no." Clint didn't say anything as Lindsay turned her head back to look over the city, leaning her head back slightly to stop tears from falling. "Two broken ribs, one concussion, and seventeen hours in the ER later, I flew her home to Malibu while Markus stayed back in Madrid enjoying the sun, surf, and more women than he knew what to do with."_

_ "__He got away with it?" Clint asked, shock slipping into his voice even against his best intention and years of training. Lindsay laughed, the sound carrying across the balcony in short waves, but what Clint noticed that this laugh wasn't like her other ones; this one was dark and cold. _

_ "__Of course he got away with it," she bit out, turning her head quickly and glaring at the archer. "His uncle is the second most powerful man at Stark Industries, the largest weapons manufacturer in the world, while her parents work for the local high school. There was no way in hell he wasn't going to get away with it."_

_ "__Did he ever try anything with you?" Lindsay faltered as Barton's words registered, she didn't expect that question to enter the conversation at any point, but it did and now she felt obligated to answer; she'd told him so much already._

_ "__You saw the way he looked at me," she responded slowly, her voice as monotone as possible. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to answer that question." Barton felt his blood boil under his skin, if he wasn't on a mission right now he was fairly certain Markus Stane would never see the light of day again. Lindsay glanced at him again and smirked slightly at the expression on his face. "Don't look like I just told you he killed my puppy, Barton. I'm a big girl, it never got past the point I couldn't handle."_

_ "__It shouldn't have reached any point at all." Lindsay raised an eyebrow at the man before shaking her head and sighing._

_ "__Well the world isn't a perfect place," she replied casually, turning back to look over the city. "If it makes you feel any better, it hasn't happened since he saw me fight some guy who grabbed my ass in a bar."_

_ "__It doesn't," Clint muttered, earning a smirk from Lindsay._

_ "__I didn't think it would."_

_ "__So you kicked his ass?" Lindsay's head whipped around after hearing those words come out of the archer's mouth, who simply stared back at her and shrugged. "What? Just because I'm a SHIELD agent doesn't mean I have to talk like I'm eighty."_

_ "__I've just never heard you swear before," Lindsay explained, still staring at him._

_ "__Well," Barton began, turning his head to look out over the city. "You have only known me about three months."_

_ "__True." The pair stood in silence for several seconds; Lindsay still staring at Barton while the older man just looked out over the towers and traffic of the busy city._

_ "__I didn't 'kick his ass' by the way." Clint turned and glanced at Lindsay who was still looking at him with a blank face. "I wanted to, boy did I want to, but Tanya didn't want me to end up in jail for… she worded it as 'killing the bastard' but I don't think I would have killed him."_

_ "__I think you would have," Barton said casually, causing Lindsay to chuckle._

_ "__Apparently so did Tanya." Lindsay's smile dipped slightly as her friend's name once again slipped through her lips; Barton felt his heart lurch slightly as he noticed the sadness clearly evident behind her eyes._

_ "__Where is she now?" Lindsay didn't answer him right away, instead she pushed herself up off the balcony and turned around slowly, facing the door back into the party. She wanted to stay out here with Clint, where she didn't have to pretend to be the perfect daughter of Tony Stark. Inside the doors of the hotel, in the eyes of the press and anyone in their social circle, she had to keep of the façade of the perfect girl who had absolutely no flaws and, like it seemed to her sometimes, no feelings. Out here, on the balcony with a man she'd known for maybe three months, she didn't have to pretend. She was allowed to feel things, allowed to show him how damaged some aspects of her were, allowed to not be perfect. But, right now at least, she had to go back to the life she was accustomed to, the life of pretending and being perfect. So, without so much as a glance back at Barton, who was still leaning against the balcony waiting for her response, she placed a calm look on her face even though what she was feeling on the inside wasn't the least bit calm. _

_ "__Malibu Methodist Cemetery," she explained, her voice monotone as though she was trying to stop herself from feeling anything at that moment. "She killed herself a few months after we got back." Barton's expression didn't change as Lindsay's words reached his ears, instead he just sighed and closed his eyes, trying to contain both his desire to walk over and wrap the younger agent in a hug and his desire to beat the living shit out of Markus Stane, who he had a feeling was responsible for Lindsay Stark's life taking the turn it did. But he didn't do either; when he was about to stand up straighter and place a hand on the brunette when she flinched forward slightly and shook her head. "Come on," she muttered, still not looking at the man behind her. "I want to have at least one more drink before the night is over." Clint didn't argue, in fact he didn't say anything at all as he followed the girl back into the giant ballroom, not mentioning how much alcohol she consumed for the remainder of the time they spent at the party._


	30. Chapter 30

_It had been a week since the party, and Clint hadn't mentioned anything Lindsay had told him once, much to her surprise. She had honestly expected him to bring it up the second they returned back to base the day after the party, but instead he just told her he would see her in a few days and took off again, leaving her alone. She wasn't exactly hurt, more like confused as to where he was going, but still she couldn't figure out why he didn't even bring it up when he returned a few days later. He didn't give her any time to question him either, not that she was planning on it._

_ "__We're leaving." Lindsay turned on the balls of her heels very quickly upon hearing Barton's voice, the knife she was about to release still clutched tightly in her grasp. The training room had been completely empty apart from her before Clint had shown up, something Lindsay had been taking advantage of by working on her throwing skills._

_ "__Welcome back," Lindsay replied curtly, lowering the knife so her hand was down around her hip, blade away from the archer. "Don't you look relaxed." Barton didn't respond to her, he simply stared at her with an expressionless face. "…or not."_

_ "__We're leaving," he repeated again, causing Lindsay to roll her eyes as she turned back toward the target she had set up for herself several feet away._

_ "__You said that already," she replied calmly as she once against raised her knife, letting it go quickly and watching as it embedded itself into the middle of the tarp, very close to the remainder of the weapons. "Where exactly do you plan on taking me?" she asked, picking up and raising yet another knife._

_ "__On a mission." Suddenly, Lindsay whipped completely around mid throw, sending the knife inches to the left of Clint's face, causing him to flinch. "Watch it!"_

_ "__You're taking me where?" Clint smirked slightly at the look of amazement on Lindsay's face, obviously shocked that those words came out of the archer's mouth._

_ "__Do you need to get your ears checked, Stark?" She rolled her eyes and made her way toward Barton, the knives she had thrown all but forgotten. _

_ "__Where are we going?" she asked; Barton thought she sounded like a small child on Christmas, smiling slightly at how excited she sounded at the prospect of getting off the base._

_ "__No idea," he explained as the two of them left the training bay and made their way toward the main hanger. "We won't get briefed until after we reach the bay." Lindsay didn't say another word after that as the pair walked through several hallways until they reached the main bay of the building._

_ "__Agent Barton, Agent Stark." Lindsay turned her head and laid eyes on the older man who she'd seen a few times since she arrived at SHIELD earlier; she was pretty sure his name was Coulson but wasn't completely sure so she simply kept her mouth shut. "Good to see you again."_

_ "__Coulson," Barton replied curtly, walking toward the large table in the center of the room, on top of which resided two thin manila folders. Barton grabbed one while Lindsay made her way over to the table to grab the other. "What do you have for us?"_

_ "__There's a woman in Russia we'd like you to deal with." Lindsay sat down next to Barton and flipped open the folder, eyeing its content up and down. Paper-clipped to one of the folder's covers was an image that looked, in Lindsay's opinion given the quality, as though it came from a surveillance camera. The woman in question was dressed in a pair of dark washed skinny jeans, black heeled boots, and a grey jacket wrapped around her thin frame, but what Lindsay noticed the most from the image was the red hair that stood out drastically._

_ "__Natasha Romanov," Barton read off the page that was attached on the opposite side of the picture Lindsay was staring at. "KGB operative and known resident of the Red Room."_

_ "__The what?" Lindsay's head whipped up quickly to stare at Clint, a confused expression on her face._

_ "__Secret Soviet brainwashing and training program," Coulson explained, turning his attention to Lindsay who was still confused. "Basically they take girls and turn them into killers."_

_ "__And very efficient killers by the looks of this," Barton said quickly, flipping through a few of the attached pieces of paper. "She killed the daughter of a political figure in Russia, caused the huge battle in São Paulo a few years ago…"_

_ "__She set an entire hospital on fire to kill one guy?" Lindsay asked as she skimmed one of the pages, one of her thin brown eyebrows raised in confusion._

_ "__So we believe." Rolling her eyes slightly, Lindsay released the piece of paper and set the folder back onto the table. "We have a safe house set up for you in Novosibirsk which is where we believe she's been set up for awhile."_

_ "__How do you want it done?" Barton asked as he too discarded his folder on the desk and leaned back in his chair. _

_ "__Quickly and quietly," Coulson explained casually. "The less people who know about this the better."_

_ "__Obviously," Barton muttered as he stood up, signaling for Lindsay to do the same. "Any new toys for us?"_

_ "__Toys?" Lindsay asked, glancing in between the two older men, one of which gained a smirk on his face once her words registered to him._

_ "__Oh, you're going to love this," he explained as he turned on his heels to walk to another section of the room where, upon further inspection, Lindsay saw yet another long table lined with weapons of various types._

_ "__Holy shit," she stated quickly, taking the stairs two at a time in order to see what resided on the table._

_ "__Language," Coulson called out as Barton and him followed her, both the comment and Lindsay's expression of wonder made Clint let out a laugh._

_ "__How many freaking arrows do you need?" Lindsay asked once Barton arrived at his spot next to her, which happened to be directly next to stacks of arrows, each of which had a different color band wrapped around the end by the feather._

_ "__These aren't just normal arrows." Barton glanced at the scientist across the table from them, who was holding one of the arrows in his thick, meaty hands. "They each have a different function to them depending on the color of the bands." Lifting one of the arrows into the light so the band in question gleamed slightly, the scientist looked between Lindsay and Clint before continuing his rant. "For example, the red ones cause small controlled explosions, while the yellow ones cause high acceleration fires to occur rather quickly."_

_ "__What's the green one do?" Lindsay asked, gesturing to one that was laying far away form the others. The scientist looked at it before blinking a few times._

_ "__The tip of the arrow on these," he began, simply gesturing to the arrow in question without actually lifting it up. "Is laced with a highly concentrated neurotoxin, which causes serious muscle disintegration which will kill a person within an hour while being extremely painful." Upon hearing the words, Lindsay took a half step away from the table, causing both Clint and Coulson to chuckle slightly._

_ "__Does she get anything cool?" Barton asked as he picked up one of the arrows, examining it closely. The scientist nodded before setting the arrow down and leading Lindsay to the other end of the table, where a decent sized box lay in the middle of the metal object. The lid of the box was very ornately decorated, which Lindsay found oddly strange seeing as everything else she'd seen around SHIELD was very simple and minimalistic in detail. She didn't comment though as she slowly reached forward and touched the smooth wood of the box, slowly sliding her pointer finger under the lid and lifting it to see what was inside._

_Inside the box was a set of blades resting on a red cushion. Each blade was about twelve inches long with decretive red and black handles, but Lindsay noticed that the blades themselves were so clear and smooth that she felt like she was looking into a mirror while she lifted one out of its box and stared at it._

_ "__Each of the blades is made of a new alloy we've been working on, which is ten times as strong as titanium but twice as light," the scientist explained, but Lindsay wasn't listening. Instead she was staring at the knives like they were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, and in a way they were. "Agent Stark?" Finally, after a few seconds more of silent staring, Lindsay blinked a few times and stared at the scientist, who was also staring at her as though he were waiting for an answer._

_ "__I'm sorry, what?"_

_ "__He said there was one more thing for you," Coulson explained, still standing next to Barton at the other end of the table, though Lindsay could see that both men were watching her intently. Nodding slowly, Lindsay set the knife back in the box and watched as the scientist moved it, revealing something underneath. As she raised a thin eyebrow in confusion, Lindsay reached forward and grabbed the top object in a small pile, watching as it unfolded upon being lifted._

_The object in question was a black halter top with each side being made of red lace instead of the black fabric like the rest of it. _

_ "__You made me a shirt?" she asked, eyeing the shirt before glancing at the scientist out of the corner of her eye. _

_ "__Its more than just a shirt," the scientist said, his voice honestly coming out in a very shocked tone. "This 'shirt' as you call it is made with bulletproof fibers woven into the material, and the lace of going up and down the sides is made of roughly the same material."_

_ "__So you're telling me I could get shot with a shot gun and it wouldn't break through this fabric?" Lindsay asked, eyeing the man with one of her eyebrows raised._

_ "__Well…no…"_

_ "__What about a knife?" Lindsay asked, setting the shirt back onto the table. "Or a machine gun?" Turning around, she gestured to Barton who was watching this exchange intently. "What happens if I piss off Barton and he shoots me? Will this 'miracle' shirt save me then?"_

_ "__Stark," Barton replied quickly, trying very hard to stop himself from laughing at both the questions he had just heard and the look of utter annoyance on the scientist's face. "I think he gets the point." Lindsay smirked slightly as she moved back toward Clint, leaving the knives and shirt where they were knowing she would get them back later._

_ "__It's just a shirt," she muttered slightly as Barton turned toward the door, her smirk growing wider when she heard Barton chuckle. She was about to follow Barton yet again when the sound of Coulson clearing his throat made both agents pause their motions. _

_ "__Aren't you forgetting something, Agent Barton?" Raising a thin eyebrow, Barton was about to question what exactly his handler was talking about when he saw Lindsay out of the corner of his eye and realized what he was talking about. He sighed and turned toward the girl, who was staring at him yet again._

_ "__There's one more thing we need to do before we get going."_

_ "__And what's that?" she asked, eyeing the archer cautiously before turning to glance at Coulson, who was gesturing toward the door Clint and her were just walking toward. Turning back around again, Lindsay saw two individuals dressed in white walking towards her, which necessarily wouldn't have freaked her out, but once she noticed that one of the women was holding a rather large needle in her hand. Rather large was an understatement, this needle looked like something that people used on rhinos, maybe elephants if the elephant was small enough. "Oh hell no!" She jumped back up a few steps and moved away from the, who she assumed were, doctors who proceeded to still walk towards her. She continued to back up until she physically ran into Coulson, who was staring at her like he didn't understand what her problem was._

_ "__What's the problem Stark?" Barton asked, eyeing the girl cautiously as Coulson grabbed her arms in order to stop her from running away. _

_ "__There is no way I'm letting them stab me with that thing!" Lindsay's eyes widened upon seeing the needle yet again, especially when she noticed the women didn't stop coming toward her._

_ "__You mean the syringe?" Coulson asked, looking between the needle and the girl, who looked absolutely terrified at the very idea of being anywhere near the object in question. Lindsay simply nodded, her throat suddenly too dry for her to comfortably form words._

_ "__They have to Stark," Barton explained, following behind the agents with the needle up the stairs toward the girl. "You need to get fitted with a tracking device…"_

_ "__A what?" Lindsay asked, suddenly trying very hard to get out of Coulson's grasp, though she was surprised at how hard that was; the man was stronger than he looked. Sighing, Barton watched as Coulson led, or more so dragged, her toward the chair behind him, setting her down while still holding onto her arm so she didn't run away. Even though she couldn't run away, that didn't stop her from struggling against him as one of the agents began wiping her arm down with an alcohol wipe and began preparing the needle. Clint saw the fear behind the young woman's eyes as the agent held the needle up to the light, inspecting it to make sure the contents inside were mixed properly before it was injected into the newest agent's arm. Part of him was shocked she wasn't screaming loud enough for the whole base to think he was murdering her._

_ "__Hey." He moved forward and knelt down in front of her, moving her attention away from the needle and to his face, though he could tell she was still scared. "Don't focus on that," Barton mentioned quickly, reaching out and grabbing her hand as Lindsay began to turn her head back toward the agent holding the syringe. "Focus on me."_

_ "__Why?" Lindsay asked, her voice tight as she looked at Barton's face. Clint smirked at her for a moment as the agent moved toward her and moved the syringe over her shoulder._

_ "__Because it's better than the alternative," he replied quickly. That didn't make Lindsay feel any better, instead she seemed to get more scared and even paler, if that were possible. Clint noticed this and sighed slightly before trying a different approach. "Don't think about it, Lindsay." He squeezed her hand lightly and Lindsay only vaguely noticed that this was the first moment Barton had ever called her by her first name. "Think of something else. Think of…" He trailed off for a second before chuckling at a memory. "Think of when your dad sang at his dinner party."_

_ "__That whole night was so embarrassing," she muttered, though she didn't turned her gaze away from Clint, who was still smiling._

_ "__But you got to see me in a tux," he replied, smirking at her as his voice got slightly deeper. "I would call that a win for you." For some reason, even though he sounded incredibly stupid, what he just said made Lindsay smile slightly and let out a slightly laugh. Barton smiled as she laughed, neither of them barely noticing the woman placing the syringe against Lindsay's skin and pulling the trigger. Lindsay did wince at the contact, but she didn't freak out like Clint was expecting her to._

_ "__All done." She turned her gaze towards her arm and noticed a slight glow under the surface of her skin that was quickly dimming as the seconds passed and the nurse wrapped the area in a clean white bandage. _

_ "__That was it?" she asked, earning a chuckle from both Barton and Coulson._

_ "__Feel stupid yet?" Lindsay didn't answer him, but Barton did noticed how her cheeks took on a slight red tint to them which, for some unknown reason, made him smile. _

_ "__You two leave in four hours," Coulson said as he watched Lindsay stand from her previous spot and move her arm around, wincing slightly as the newly placed device pulled at the inside of her arm._

_ "__You'll get used to it." She smiled lightly at Barton as they both turned and made their way to collect their paper work and new 'toys', the whole time Barton just watched the new agent, feeling a new emotion he couldn't place and, honestly, wasn't quiet sure he wanted to._


	31. Chapter 31

Lindsay ran up the fifth flight of stairs in a row, barely out of breath as her eyes scanned the area for any sign whatsoever of Clint. As soon as she saw his face on the video feed, she knew she had to find him, and she knew if she waited for Fury's orders, he would want Natasha to be the one to get him back, seeing as she'd been out of the game for so long. So that was why she didn't wait, that was why she was here.

"Clint, you son of a bitch," she whispered, glancing around the rafter. "Where the hell are you?" Moving forward with one hand placed securely on the handle of one of her knifes, Lindsay moved as quickly and quietly as possible, trying to get any sight of the archer. She had already searched most of the areas around here, getting absolutely nowhere with those at all.

She was about to give up and turn back to the control room when she turned a corner and stopped. There, literally fifteen feet ahead of her, was Barton. He paused upon seeing the girl, but nothing in his face gave Lindsay any sense that he knew who she was.

"Clint," she muttered, staring at him almost as though she were afraid if she blinked, he would disappear from her life once again. He didn't say anything to her, or even respond in any way that gave her a sense he heard her.

"Agent Stark?" Fury's voice rang through her ear for the first time since leaving the bridge, making her jump. "We've lost video surveillance on Barton."

"No worries," she muttered, her eyes still glued to Clint. "I found him." Before the director could say anything back to her, Lindsay reached up and pressed a single button on her earpiece, silencing the older man. Slowly lowering her hand back down to her side, she stared at Barton, trying to figure out if he was going to talk. "You alright?" He didn't speak; he just kept staring at the young woman as though he were frozen in place. Lindsay stared back at him, waiting for him to do absolutely anything. Once she realized he wasn't going to talk, she sighed and took a tentative step forward, followed by another and another until she was only a few feet away from the older man, who was still staring at her like she wasn't truly there. "Clint?" She looked up and stared into his eyes, noticing for the first time the awkward tint they took on. "I know you're in there," Lindsay whispered, moving her hand slowly away from the handle of her knife. Watching his eyes intently, Lindsay felt a small smile tug on her lips as the blue tint started turning back into the normal color of his eyes, feeling as though she was bringing Barton back to earth…

"Agent Stark!" Whipping around, Lindsay felt like screaming when her eyes landed on the female agent who interrupted her phone call with Tony previously. She was standing on the opposite end of the hall with another agent on her left, each holding their guns pointed at Clint. Lindsay turned back toward, but was met with his fist connecting with her face. The force of the blow sent her toppling onto the floor, clenching her eyes closed momentarily as the pain spread from the bridge of her nose to her entire head.

The sound of gunfire filled the room as the two SHEILD agents rushed forward to help their fallen agent, but they didn't get far. As soon as the first gunshot rang out, Clint grabbed his bow and a single arrow and shot the second agent, arrow embedding itself in the man's stomach, sending him falling to the floor. Lindsay watched in horror as Clint strung another arrow and aimed at the girl, who was still running toward the two of them. She opened her mouth to scream, but didn't get a sound out before Barton let the arrow fly, the object embedding itself into the now silent agent's neck.

Lindsay remained silent as Clint lowered his bow to his side and turned away from the fallen agents. He glanced down at Lindsay and, assuming that the force of the punch had knocked her out, went to step over her. Once his foot was over Lindsay and his other leg was making its way across, she swung her body around and kicked his legs out from under him, sending him barreling to the ground. She jumped up quickly, making her way away from Barton before he had a chance to react and grab her.

Clint sprang back up almost as soon as he hit the ground, not giving Lindsay much time to separate the two of them. He went to raise his bow at her, reaching quickly for an arrow. Once she realized what he was trying to do, Lindsay did the first thing that she could think of; she kicked her leg toward the archer. The toe of her boot connected with the structure of the bow with such a force that it flew out of Barton's hand and slid under the nearby railings, landing on one of the many rafters below. Both of them watched it fall and, once it was gone, Lindsay slowly turned back to look at Clint, half expecting a lecture of sort from him for hurting his precious bow. It was only when he threw a punch that narrowly missed her face did she remember that the Clint Barton who would lecture her and joke with her, the Clint Barton who always knew exactly what to do to make her smile, was gone, and that notion filled her with more rage than she had ever felt before.

With anger boiling under her skin, Lindsay gripped the handle of her knife and swung forward, nicking Barton's cheek before he kicked her feet out from under her. She rolled away before he could get a chance to attack her again, but not before he kicked her knife in the same direction of his bow. She twisted herself around, kicking Barton's feet out again, only thing time she flipped herself on top of him and pinned him down before he got a chance to get up again.

"This seems familiar," she muttered, mostly to herself seeing as Clint was currently trying to fight her. One of his fists connected with her face, almost knocking her off him. Not seeing any other option, Lindsay did the first thing that came to mind; without a second thought, she wrapped her thin fingers around his neck and squeezed. She didn't want to kill him, that was the last thing on her mind, it was just that, as the moments dragged on, she was beginning to remember how much stronger than her he was, and realized that she couldn't last much longer against him. So no, as much as it pained her to be doing this, her goal wasn't to kill him, just knock him out.

She continued to press down as Clint struggled to break away from her, his arms swinging widely in an attempt to get the young woman off of him. After about another minute, his motions became a bit sluggish and less agitated as his body began to temporarily shut down from lack of oxygen. Finally, Clint's arms went limp at his sides and he closed his eyes, enveloping the room in silence. Lindsay, once she was certain Clint was actually unconscious, sighed and released her fingers from around the older man's neck, suddenly feeling absolutely exhausted. Leaning back so she was now resting all of her weight on Barton's legs, she twisted her body slightly so she no longer saw Clint's face (she somehow felt guilty for what she had done) and moved her hand up to press a button on her ear piece.

"Fury," she let out, her voice filling the area completely as she called the director. "Barton's unconscious."

"What happened?" Coulson's voice filled her ear instead of the voice she was expecting, causing her to smirk as best as she could.

"I may or may not have choaked him out." The silence she received as an answer almost made her laugh, and if it weren't Clint lying unconscious on the floor behind her she would have. "I take it from the all-encompassing silence that no one was expecting that answer?"

"No," Fury's voice cut in, earning another smirk from Lindsay. "Where are you?" She stood up slowly and walked toward the railing, looking for any identifying markers as to where she currently was and, upon finding one, took a deep breath.

"Sector G, about 4 st…" Suddenly, a deep pain sprung up in Lindsay's side, silencing all power of speech she previously possessed. Holding in a breath, her gaze lowered to the source of the pain. The red part of her uniform was sliced away, and was replaced by the tip of an arrow sticking out of her side.

"Agent Stark?" Coulson's voice filled her ear, his voice full of concern from her sudden cut off, but she didn't answer him. She twisted her head around slowly to see over her shoulder, staring face-to-face with Barton, whose hand was clenched around the other end of the arrow.

"Clint," she let out, her voice coming out in an airy whisper as another ripple of pain coursed through her. The archer didn't even flinch at the sound of his name, or at the pain clearly evident on the girl's face, he simply stared at her as he pulled the arrow out of her side. Lindsay sank to the ground; once she got there, all the breath left her body when she noticed the green band around the end of the arrow. "Oh shit."

As the room began to dim slightly to her, Lindsay tried to fight back as Barton lifted her pain-filled body over the railing where both his bow and her knife had fallen, but she was in too much pain to do much. Instead, she just closed her eyes and waited, not making any noise when Clint let her go.


	32. Chapter 32

"Agent Stark?" The sound of Coulson's voice rang inside her head as pain coursed through her entire body. She winced slightly, coming back from the land of the unconscious, fighting against the death-like grip that the pain had on her. "Lindsay?" Slowly, once the fear in Coulson's voice became clear to her and the feeling of falling had finally stopped, Lindsay opened her eyes.

Most of the lights around her were all out, even some of the emergency lights weren't working, which made it even harder for the agent to see. There were holes in various areas around the room, including walls and scaffolding; Lindsay would include ceiling if she could see that high, but all she could see were several rafters until it got too high, then it was just black. She groaned and moved slightly before wincing and closing her eyes as a new wave of pain hit her.

"Lindsay!"  
"Screaming at me isn't going to make me answer you faster," she muttered, her eyes rolling slightly as she once again opened them, moving slowly as the pain decreased, though only slightly. Coulson sighed on the other end of her ear piece in such a way that made Lindsay know he was holding her breath, which for some reason made her feel slightly calmer. "In fact, if the past is any indication, it's just going to make things worst." She shifted her self slightly, beginning to try and push herself off the floor. Pain was still apart of her at this point, but she was trying her best to ignore it, however difficult that was.

"You alright? Coulson asked, his tone one of concern. Lindsay didn't respond right away, instead she bit her lip and pushed herself up until she was once again on her feet, reaching out to hold onto a wall so that she wouldn't fall.

"Just dandy," she bit out, her voice forced and dark. She pressed her hand against her side, trying to do anything in her power to dull the pain Clint's arrow was currently raining down on her side. On her whole body actually. "Coulson… I've been hit." Silence followed after that, Lindsay was almost certain her audio feed had cut out before her handler's voice filled her ear again.

"By a bullet?" Lindsay let out a laugh, the sound extremely foreign for the situation at hand.

"It's a little more serious than that," she muttered, looking down at her hand and side, both of which were coated in a fresh layer of blood. "What kind of neurotoxin did you tell me Clint's arrows were coated with?" Coulson swore on the other line, which normally would have made Lindsay let out a laugh or a snarky comment, but the seriousness of the situation made her rethink that plan of action. Instead she winced yet again and looked around the room, trying to figure out exactly where she was. Across the room, she spied a hallway that was partially lit by a few lights. With her hand still firmly pressed to the front of her wound, she slowly crossed the room and into the lights of the hall. Walking in and of itself was, for lack of a better word, hell. It felt like every time she lifted her leg, she was being stabbed again and again in the same spot on her side. But, even as the pain increased steadily, she knew that staying in the same location as a sitting duck was basically a death sentence and, as much as people believed otherwise, she wasn't ready to die yet. As soon as it was brighter, Lindsay took a deep breath and glanced down at her side, slowly removing her hand.

The wound wasn't as large as she had expected, though the size didn't change how badly it was bleeding. Her shirt was mostly red now, the laced tapering off around the wound; Lindsay assumed it looked exactly the same in the back. Blood was leaking down her side to her leg, where it was slowly marking part of the floor; she assumed there was a rather large pile of the liquid back where she had previously been laying. The pain was growing with intensity as the seconds progressed, the poison beginning to do its job on her body.

"Where are you?" Coulson asked, his voice bringing Lindsay back to the situation she was currently in. She looked around the hall for a second in order to get her bearings, though she still was finding it hard to judge her location.

"I'm not quiet sure…" Lindsay trailed off as she slowly, very slowly, made her way down the hall toward the light, her hand returning to her side in a minor attempt to stop the blood flow.

"How do you not know?" Coulson asked, sounding exasperated. She swore she heard him frantically moving around wherever the hell he was, but then again the hellicarrier was falling apart so maybe not. Lindsay was about to turn another corner in an attempt to figure out where the hell she was, but winced as a wave of pain attacked her, this wave so strong she had to lean against the wall to stop herself from falling over. Gritting her teeth to keep from crying out, Lindsay closed her eyes and waited for the pain to momentarily cease, if that was even possible at this point.

"Lady Stark!" Opening her eyes, Lindsay twisted her head over her shoulder and laid eyes on Thor, who was running toward her with a serious expression on his face. Once he reached her, he looked her over, pausing at her side. "You're injured."

"It's not as bad as it looks," Lindsay explained, lying through her teeth in order to avoid Thor treating her like a child.

"No," Coulson's voice rang through her ear; he had obviously heard what she had just told Thor. "It's worst."

"I'm fine," Lindsay bit out at both Thor and Coulson as another wave of pain ran over her, this one being so strong her legs almost gave out from under her. With one hand still holding onto her side for dear life, she reached out with her free hand and gripped the first thing she could find to keep herself from falling, which happened to be Thor's arm. "Sorry," she muttered, though didn't let go of the God's arm. Thor just stared at her, his facial expression giving Lindsay the impression that he didn't know weather to laugh at her or feel extremely bad for her, and honestly Lindsay didn't know which she would do if she was in his shoes either. "Where were you going?

"There was a disturbance in the room of the cage," Thor explained, his voice echoing down the hall. Lindsay nodded her head slowly, trying her best to not ask Thor to be quieter as her head began to pound, then paused as the meaning of his words sunk in.

"Loki." Thor nodded, taking in the seriousness of her face. "Did you hear that Coulson?"

"Loud and clear," the older man stated. "Video feed in that room is down."

"Well, that's not good," Lindsay, muttered before looking at Thor. "Lead the way Iron Giant." He looked as though he wanted to say something about her comment, but paused as Lindsay shuttered in pain yet again. Instead of commenting, the God moved forward and lifted the young woman up as gently as possible and held her close to him as he began running toward the room Loki resided in, paying careful attention to her damaged side. "What are you doing?"

"Faster," Thor bit out. Under normal circumstances, Lindsay would have objected very strongly to someone she had only just met carrying her, but seeing as she was in so much pain that she could barely hold herself upright at the moment, she chose to keep her mouth shut. They made their way down various halls, turning several times until they reached the hall directly outside the room Loki was supposed to be residing in. Once they were there, Thor carefully placed Lindsay back on her feet before turning toward the door.

The doors rushed open rather quickly after that, revealing a spotless room that looked just as it had when Lindsay had been in there earlier. It wasn't the state of the room that caught Lindsay's attention; it was the fact that Loki was standing in the middle of the room with the cage door wide open.

"No!" Thor rushed forward prepared to tackle his brother back into the cage, only to have the figure of his brother disappear as soon as Thor lunged at him. With nothing to stop his force, Thor flew forward and landed inside the cage, with the door sliding closed behind him.

"Are you ever not going to fall for that?" Loki asked from his new spot near the control panel. Thor didn't say anything, just lifted himself off the floor and glared at Loki from behind the glass. Suddenly, as Lindsay watched helplessly from her spot against the wall, getting light-headed from both the blood loss and the toxin, Thor lifted his hammer and smashed it against the glass before him. The force of the blow didn't shatter the glass as it should have, but it did cause one area of the wall to crack, splintering off in the shape of a quarter.

"Hey!" Loki turned toward the sound, however quiet it was, in time to notice Lindsay throwing her last knife at the God. Seeing as her right hand was still clutching her side and she was extremely light headed, she missed but still managed to nick his cheek yet again, drawing a small trickle of blood. "That's for whatever the hell you did to Clint." Loki didn't respond right away, instead he lifted two of his fingers to his cheek and touched the wound, examining the crimson color that now graced his hand. Without a word, Loki raised his scepter and sent a blast of energy toward her, the force of the blow sending Lindsay flying across the room and crashing into a wall.

The room was beginning to grow darker to Lindsay as new pain assaulted her body. It would have knocked her out if she wasn't too determined to keep watching the altercation before her with hooded eyes.

Loki was now staring at Thor from his spot behind the control panel, the latter of the two still trying to break his way out.

"The humans think us immortal," Loki said calmly, his voice sickly smooth as he stared at his brother. "Shall we test that?" Lindsay watched as Loki's hand move toward the release button, only seconds away from sending Thor plummeting to his death. He was about to press the button when a noise behind the girl stopped him.

"Move away, please." Lindsay's heart about stopped when she heard her handler's voice. Lifting herself up slightly so she was holding her upper body up, which was much harder than she expected, she turned her head as quickly as she could without passing out and watched Phil walk further into the room, a very futuristic looking gun glowing in his hands. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and looked as though he wanted to run over and help her but she willed him not to, if he stopped pointing the weapon at the maniac before them they would all be dead. So, instead of helping the bleeding girl, he continued walking toward Loki. "You like this? We started working on the prototype after you sent The Destroyer. Even I don't know what it does. You wanna find out?" Lindsay watched Coulson calmly move his finger toward the trigger, ready to blow the God away, ready to be the hero he always wanted to be, when something happened that made her cry out in a new form of pain. Within a split second, Loki disappeared from his spot at the control panel and reappeared directly behind Coulson, which was where he reached forward and drove the scepter through his chest.

"Coulson..." Lindsay whimpered as her handler fell to his knees; crimson color already seeping across his chest as he continued to get closer to the floor. Loki watched him fall, a blank expression plastered on his face as he turned toward the control panel attached to the cage he previously resided in. Before Lindsay had time to react, Loki reached out and pressed a single button, sending Thor and the cage plummeting toward the ground below. Without so much as a glance toward Coulson or Lindsay, Loki turned and began walking out of the room.

"You're going to lose," Coulson spoke, almost so quietly that Lindsay didn't hear him, but Loki did. He turned slowly and stared at the fatally injured agent.

"Am I?"

"It's in your nature." Loki smirked and gestured around the room.

"Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky, where is my disadvantage?"

"You lack conviction." Loki chuckled slightly under his breath and turned his attention to Lindsay, who was still on the floor across the room from her handler, trying not to pass out from both shock and pain.

"I don't think I…"

Suddenly, Loki went flying backwards, cutting him off mid-sentence. Lindsay, completely stunned at what had just occurred, turned her gaze back to Coulson, who was holding a weapon, its base glowing slightly.

"So that's what it does." Lindsay let out an airy sound as she pushed herself off the floor, trying to ignore the sharp pain that was radiating up her side and the other at the base of her skull, though she was using every ounce of strength possible to not fall on her face. At the same moment, Fury ran into the room; he took one look at the bloody girl who was already on her feet before he ran toward Coulson, who was slowly growing paler and paler as the moments progressed. Lindsay limped closer to Coulson, moving as quickly as she could given how much pain she was currently in; when she reached him she fell to her knees next to Fury.

"I'm sorry, Boss," Coulson wheezed, his voice growing quieter by the minute. "The God rabbited." Fury shook his head.

"Just stay awake, ok? Eyes on me."  
"No." Lindsay took a shaky breath and tried to stop the tears from falling. "I'm clocking out here."

"Not an option," Fury growled.

"It's ok, Boss. This was never going to work… if they didn't have… something to…" He closed his eyes. Lindsay, after taking another breath, reached forward and began shaking him. The movement and lack of her hand on the wound caused her side to bleed more, but she didn't seem to notice. In fact, at this moment in time, she didn't really feel anything.

"Coulson! Wake the hell up!"

"Agent Stark." Fury reached out to grab Lindsay's shoulder, but she kept moving out of his grasp.

"Coulson, you son of a bitch, I did NOT come back here to have you die on me!"

"Language." Coulson slowly opened his eyes and stared at Lindsay, who was slowly beginning to cry. "What… have I told you… about swearing?"

"Not to," she muttered, her voice breaking, in fact it was the most broken Coulson or Fury had ever heard her. Coulson gave off a weak smile as he stared at the girl before him; he slowly lifted his hand and placed it on Lindsay's cheek, wiping away one of her fallen tears with his thumb.

"Good… girl…" He smiled at her slightly, which Lindsay tried to return but only ended up crying more. She lifted her hand to her face and placed it on top of Coulson's, leaning into it.

"I'm sorry," she muttered "If I hadn't fallen I could have stopped him, I could have saved you," she argued, but Coulson just slowly shook his head as much as he could.

"This wasn't your… fault," he whispered, breathing very slowly at this point. "You did… all you… could… understand?" Lindsay stared at him for a few seconds, not saying anything. "I…need you to… tell me you understand." Taking a deep breath, or as deep as she could muster at the moment, Lindsay looked at him with hooded eyes.

"I understand," she whispered. Coulson smiled again before opening his mouth.

"I'm so proud of you Lindsay." Letting out one last breath, Phil Coulson leaned his head back against the wall and once again closed his eyes.

"Agent Coulson is down," Fury said into his headset, watching Lindsay who still hadn't look away from her fallen handler. Her body was rigid despite the immense pain she was in; Any normal person would have passed out from the pain the toxin was doing on her body along with all her other injuries, but Lindsay was too consumed with grief at the moment to give the poison a second thought.

"Paramedics are on the way," an agent said, his voice resonating through Lindsay's earpiece.

"Doesn't matter," she muttered, her eyes still trained on Coulson's face, which still had a small trace of a smile present. She moved his hand away from her face and held it in her lap, tears still running down her face but her voice no longer wavering as it had been moments before. "He's gone."

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**Hey guys! So this chapter was really hard for me to write because Coulson is like my favorite character to write for. So I hope you guys like it!**


	33. Chapter 33

**Hey guys! Sorry for a) the lack of uploads recently, school got crazy and writers block hit and b) the fact that this chapter isn't a flashback. Those chapters are THE HARDEST for me to write and take the longest, so instead of making you wait even longer for a chapter, I thought I would just upload one of these instead.** **So enjoy!**

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"There we go." Lindsay winced slightly as a tired sounding doctor cut the final stitch and began wrapping a tight bandage around her side. "Let me give you something for the pain…"

"No," she muttered, her voice coming out cold and lifeless. The doctor stared at her in confusion, trying to wrap his head around her answer.

"You're going to be in quite a bit of pain when the anesthetic wears off." Lindsay didn't say anything as she shifted herself off the cold metal table. As soon as she placed weight on her feet, Lindsay felt a dull pain shoot around the newly stitched area of skin and up her side, a pain she knew was only going to grow in intensity throughout the day.

"It's nothing I haven't dealt with before."

"With all do respect, Agent Stark, this _isn't_ like anything you've ever dealt with before!" The doctor exclaimed, eyeing the girl as if she were crazy. "The neurotoxin those arrows are laced with cause serious muscle deterioration. In my opinion…"

"Did I ask for your opinion?" She bit out, her voice dark and sharp. Before the doctor had time to question her choices any further, Lindsay walked out of the medical bay. She made an attempt to walk out as normally as possible, though she was finding it increasingly difficult; the tense feeling of newly repaired skin was beginning to ache her slightly.

People were running around the hall like chickens with their heads cut off, moving so quickly some were bumping into one another. Lindsay watched them silently as she slowly made her way toward the control room, only stopping so people rolling covered gurneys could get passed.

Once the doors to the control room opened, every eye in the room turned toward her. Tony, and surprisingly Fury, looked relieved to see the young spy standing before them, while Steve just looked terrified, which Lindsay couldn't blame him for. Her pants were splattered with dried blood, both hers and not, with a few slice wounds placed in various locations up and down her legs. Her top was the same one she had been wearing when Clint's arrow pierced her side, which explained why it was more red than black at this point. The red lace on the right side was torn out completely where the arrow had hit her, which was the worst part to Lindsay because that was her favorite part of the outfit.

"Agent Stark," Fury said smoothly as Lindsay made her way toward the open seat next to her father. She felt the pain beginning to increase every time she moved, but she kept her face blank while sitting slowly in the chair. "How are you feeling?"

"Where are we on Loki?" she asked, her voice monotone and her gaze slightly dark. Fury watched her for several seconds before speaking to the group in front of him.

"We're dead in the air up here," Fury explained, his voice sounding grim. "Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor…" He sighed and shook his head. "I got nothing for you." No one in the room spoke; Lindsay noticed Steve was busy looking at something in his hands. After several minutes had passed in tense silence, Fury sighed again. "Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though because I was playing on something even riskier." Lindsay raised one of her thin eyebrows, wondering what the hell could be riskier than building weapons from an alien energy source SHIELD didn't understand.

"There was an idea, Stark knows this," Fury stated, gesturing toward Tony, who looked like he wanted to punch someone. "It was called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more." He paused his speech and looked at Lindsay, who was staring at him rather intently. "Coulson died believing in that idea." She felt her chest tighten at the mention of Phil. Lindsay closed her eyes and leaned her head back, praying she wouldn't start crying again. "He died believing in heroes." Tony, finally having enough, quickly got up and made his way out of the room, not casting another glance at anyone behind him. Steve, who finally took his gaze away from the items in his hands, sighed and got up to follow him out, probably to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. Lindsay turned and watched the two go, though making no move to go after them. After the doors closed, she slowly turned back toward Fury, wincing slightly as a wave of pain laced its way up her side. The room was once again thrust into silence; Lindsay didn't know what to say to the man in the room. Neither of them spoke, they just stared at each other as if willing the other to open their mouth.

"You didn't take any pain medication, did you?" Fury asked, eyeing the girl cautiously. Lindsay opened her mouth to argue when a wave of pain crashed against her; so intense she couldn't stop from visibly grimacing.

"How the hell could you tell?" she asked, her teeth gritted in order to stop from crying out in pain.

"You were always stubborn about that sort of thing," Fury explained, smirking slightly after several seconds. "Plus, Doctor Granger called a few minutes before you arrived." Lindsay would have rolled her eyes, but she was in too much pain to accomplish her task.

"I don't need drugs to make me numb to the world," Lindsay muttered, glancing away from Fury as yet another wave of pain ripped through her. She may have some conflicted feelings toward Fury, but she still didn't want him to see her weak like this. Fury stared at her for a few seconds before shaking his head.

"We don't need you immobilized in pain either." Lindsay opened her mouth to argue that she was fine but ended up grimacing in pain again. The pain was so intense now that it felt like someone was holding a blowtorch to her side. Fury watched her struggle, both annoyed and somewhat proud at how she refused to vocalize her pain.

"Coulson would hate you being this stubborn." The room grew silent after that point; Lindsay didn't know how to respond. She wanted to argue with him, to claim she wasn't being stubborn, but she knew even mentioning Coulson would send her back into a whirlwind of tears and frustration. So instead she kept her mouth firmly closed and her eyes downcast.

After a few moments of silence, Fury sighed and reached into his jacket pocket. Upon removing it, Lindsay, out of the corner of her eye, noticed his fingers wrapped around a rather large syringe, which was completely filled with a shadowy silver liquid.

"Strongest local anesthetic we have," he explained, slowing moving toward Lindsay. "It should completely eliminate the pain for at least a few hours."

"No." Fury paused his motion after hearing the young agents voice, taking in how weak and pain filled it was. "I don't need it."

"Agent Stark…"

"I said no, Nick," she bit out. Fury sighed yet again and, without saying anything, set the syringe on the table next to Lindsay. When she didn't make any move to even look at it, Fury shook his head and lowered himself into the chair Tony once resided in.

"You know," he muttered, relaxing a bit into the chair. "Coulson didn't think we should have brought you on all those years ago." This got Lindsay's attention. She turned her head toward her previous boss and stared at him, waiting for him to continue. Fury looked over at her and nodded. "Oh yeah. Yeah he believed that a teenage girl who had never so much as been in a real fight before Ward would never be able to live with the idea of killing people on command. He eventually came around." He paused for a moment and smirked slightly to himself. "Personally I never doubted for a second."

"What's your point here, Fury?" she asked, her voice almost too quiet to hear. Fury shrugged before slowly getting out of the chair and walking toward the door.

"Just thought you'd want to know he believed in you." Just as he was about to leave, he paused and turned around. "A lot of people do." With that, he allowed the door to close, leaving Lindsay completely alone.

"Son of a bitch." She went to move from the chair in hopes of finding her father and Steve, only to find herself letting out a cry as the pain increased yet again. Why Fury had ever issued Clint poison tipped arrows was beyond her. She leaned back into the chair and groaned. The doctor was right, this was only going to get worse before it got better; soon it was going to get so bad that she wouldn't be able to walk, let alone help fight Loki. "God damn it." She turned and wrapped her fingers around the syringe and lifted it off the table. Ignoring the pain that was screaming in her side as best she could, she lowered the waist of her pants and inserted the needle into her thigh, slamming the plunger down. Almost immediately, the pain in her side all but disappeared.

"Oh thank God," she let out as she adjusted her pants, relaxing completely into the leather cushion of the chair.

"Feeling better?" Lindsay jumped up from the chair and, apart from noticing her side was completely numb, laid eyes on the blank face of Natasha.

"Much." The two women eyed each other, their expressions both blank and slightly cold. "Anything I can do for you?" she asked cautiously, eyeing the woman up and down. Apart from a partially split lip, the redhead looked as thought she hadn't seen combat at all, which made something in Lindsay grow white hot.

"Not for me." Lindsay raised a thin eyebrow, waiting for the woman to continue. "Barton's is asking for you."


End file.
